The Babadook

Rating: 9/10 (26 March 2018)

The Babadook is an Australian film directed by Jennifer Kent being her first feature length film. The film is about a widowed mother named Amelia Vannick (Essie Davis), her son Samuel Vannick (Noah Wiseman), and Samuel's obsession with being afraid of the monster within their home. Amelia at first takes this fear of monsters to be something that is normal for an adolescent boy, but soon finds out there is something lurking within the home when a book named Mr. Babadook finds its way into the home. The film gives us a look as to why Amelia is a widow, and how she is coping with it after all these years. On the anniversary of her husband's death the Babadook tends to grow in strength. The Babadook could be seen as an allegory to Amelia's crippling depression and sadness that she has dealt with for quite some time. The building of her emotions finally come out as a monster known as the Babadook. If you as a viewer are looking for jump scares within this film, you will not find any here. Rather, you will find a psychologically intense film that shows what true depression and sadness can do to a human being and what it can drive us to do. Jennifer Kent looks away from conventional horror films and the blood and gore that we may all be used to, instead she uses the human psyche as a plot point in this critically acclaimed film.