Review of The Babadook (2014) by Fishersam — 03 Dec 2014

I hated this film. To summarize it. It is about a woman raising her child alone after her husband died in a car wreck before the child's birth.

Le me tell you why I hate this film. It was suppose to be a "scary movie". At no point was anything about this film scary. There were a few exorcist-like scenes that we have all seen 277 times. The film developed extremely slow. The director focused on showing how horrible of a mother the main character is. She lets her son walk all over her and never considers disciplining him. Single mother or not, that kid needed a spanking. After filling 80% of the movie with boring back story about an annoying unruly child, they started to discuss The Babadook. The film never established the antagonist, The Babadook, or why the movie goer should be afraid of him. The film simply goes, "Hi everyone, this woman who can't get over her past doesn't know how to discipline her son. Now here is a moving suit that talks and creates wall shadows!".

I kept watching the film waiting for it to give me something but before I knew it, the end of the movie was there. I WONT but I almost want to spoil the ending so viewers wont have to sit through what I sat through. Lets just say the ending leaves a lot to be desired.

For the first half of the film, I thought the boy had autism but it just turns out, he's just a really awful person because his mother is a really awful mother. A lot of people will say the kid was just a great actor to make the viewers hate him so much but I'll counter that by saying they went overboard and focused waaayyyy too much of the film on how much of an awful kid and mother the pair were.