Review of The Babadook (2014) by Jarhead335 — 02 Aug 2015

The Babadook was a decent horror Australian horror film whose imaginative story heightens the intrigue from the get-go. The Babadook is itself a horrifying antagonist, creepily done and eerily real. The atmosphere that is built up throughout the movie was done wonderfully, particularly The Babadook's signature call, which you'll hear two or three times en route to the end. Unfortunately, though, the amazing atmospheric build-ups never culminate in a defining moment of fear. The viewer is never grabbed fully even once to feel the movie to the fullest.

However, there were a handful of wrinkles in the overall delivery, not the least of which was the terrible supporting cast. The two main characters, Amelia and her son, Sam, were portrayed beautifully, but the rest of the cast was downright D-List. Similarly, the sound work was pretty disappointing, particularly when the second encounter with the monster, where viewers will hear an all-too-familiar B-List dinosaur roar we're supposed to associate with horrifying monsters. It was pretty glaringly in contrast to the rest of the film, and detracted from the terror of the moment.

The worst part, though, was definitely the ending. It was almost as if the writers were intruded on and told that all of a sudden their deadline had been moved up to 5 minutes from then, and they for no reason had to wrap everything up with no thought or respect to the rest of the movie. Literally, the ending makes zero sense in the context of the movie itself. Not only that, but it wasn't even a GOOD ending, it was pretty brutally bad, with the usual 'everyone's hunky-dory at the end' trope tossed it when it seems nothing was actually solved.

I threw this movie on at 12:30 AM to see how scared I could make myself before I fell asleep. Despite some uneasiness after watching, I managed to drift off no problem. To me, that's not the mark of a horror classic, despite the movie's pleasantly chilling vibes.