It Was So Good, Until... (Major Spoiler Alerts)

Rating: Null/10 (2 March 2015)

I'd heard of The Babadook a few months back and was fairly eager to watch it after a friend had said it wasn't quite what you'd expect from an average horror film. With the horror genre seemingly beginning to dwindle into simple moneymakers, The Babadook offered something different. Instead of creating a supernatural antagonist that has a craving for blood and destruction , the film teaches the audience that the real horrors can lay within oneself.
The film isn't your typical horror flick with cheap jump scares galore, it was an hour and a half build up of tension, slowly exposing the deterioration of the mother's mind. For a horror film the cinematography is just stunning. The use of time lapse in the sleep sequences and the stop motion for the - almost animated - monster scares were far more harrowing than any James Wan flick in recent years.
Essie Davis' performance was also another highlight as she conveys a slowly maddening mind with a convincing portrayal of grief and insanity. Also the young Noah Wiseman - as irritating his character was - performs with succinct realism and doesn't add too much 'Hollywood child star' to his performance.
But sadly, this film didn't sustain its brilliance as far as narrative. With just twenty minutes to go, the film had done a 180 and brought in a stereotypical climax with a seemingly rushed solution. The ending was unsatisfying and the metaphors behind the whole film were quite unoriginal, turning the film into what was a terrifying horror set in a real world with real family problems to a fantastical world where the mother can obviously get away with murdering the dog and trying to strangle her son and where everything is solved and equilibrium is restored in a matter of a night.
Overall, a great film for the first hour and ten minutes but the conclusion slacks, making this sorely disappointing as it is such a unique narrative with great directing and acting, using suspense instead of outrageous horror and containing it within a domestic setting. This film still deserves an 8/10, I can forgive the last 20 minutes for the sake of the rest of the brilliant film.