Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is chilling.
This horror film came to my attention via the internet suggesting it. If you haven’t noticed I’m a bit of a horror fan, so I jumped at a potentially good horror film in our cyber midst. This film does some work, let me tell you. The film is only a year old and made waves at Sundance Film festival alongside another film you will all recall I loved: Frank. That being said, the film had a lot to live up to.
Essie Davis stars as Amelia, who is the widowed mother of Samuel, an imaginative but unruly boy of six. Upon discovering an odd and frightening pop-up book on Samuel’s bookshelf, their lives begin to spiral out of control. As Amelia becomes more and more unbalanced and Sam becomes more disturbed, the titular Babadook continues to gain power until the eventual climax of the film.
The acting is pretty good. The film has a lot of child actors and they all actually do pretty well. Essie Davis kicks some ass going from manic to terrifying to sweet with seamless transition. The directing was great and the soundtrack was… just wow. Sound design is a big part of what makes this film actually scary. Sounds come off as outlandishly alien and camera techniques match up with the sound in terms of disturbing imagery. The Babadook himself looks awesome and the way he is used in conjunction with the book is really great. There is something so frightening about a child’s book with disturbing and graphic imagery in it.
Best of all, this film as allegorical; it represents the cycle of repressed grief and eventual breakdown into madness. It has a lot of little nods to itself peppered in and alludes to greater themes easily. I don’t want to ruin too much about the film so let’s leave it at that.
The film does fall a bit in a few areas. A romance plot initially introduced is suddenly dropped with no real explanation, which is quite jarring. The ending, while satisfying, is preceded by a confusing climax that also isn’t fully explained. The film uses mystery a lot, but sometimes this interpretive approach covered some things that I’d have rather known.
4 Stars. It’s a good film in a slowly refreshing genre of cerebral horror. Get on board, you won’t regret it.