Not a horror

Rating: 4/10 (16 November 2014)

This shouldn't have been pitched as a horror. It's a study in the developing psychosis of a poor single mother with an ungovernable child.
The pace is slow, colours mostly drained and grey, and the mood is depressing. The two main characters are sympathetic, especially the boy who is played really well. I actually had a twinge of concern for the actor at one point, wondering if it was appropriate to have an adult screaming at him.
The other characters were poorly drawn and didn't really fit in. Why have two social workers instead of one, why was the babadook in the parkinson's lady's house, why wasn't the sister involved in the end? None of them really matters to the story.
So after an hour you have a story perfectly consistent with a depressed woman under pressure who begins to have hallucinations and poses a threat to her child. Why not play that out?
Instead we get a flimsy supernatural intervention and a tacked on ending to what was a realistic story. By that point the child's behavioural problems have been externalised after a couple of nights on sedatives, and the mother has switched to full blown mental collapse after being infected by The Thing in the shadows. Bit of a mess, really - although I did enjoy the twist where the boy ties his mother up to save her.
Some of the sound was good. I liked the moaning wind. The shadows were good, and the time lapse on the mother's face under the sheet as night passed was impressive.
ps. Thanks to nybred4 for the anagram of the title. I hadn't twigged that - doh! Is nybred an anagram?
pps. Interesting link of a psychological review - I'll have to watch again: http://the-artifice.com/the-babadook-mental-illness/