Unintentionally hilarious film that's not in the least horrific - unless you're 10!

Rating: 4/10 (19 April 2015)

Either I'm so desensitized to horror flicks that they don't bother me anymore, or this low budget film from my Aussie homeland was really really lame. Not helping the matter is the villain's unfortunate and childish-sounding catchphrase (which I won't reveal here) which cracked me up the first time I heard it - it's akin to trying to sell an adult on a monster's capacity for horror by having it to go round muttering "boogie boogie boogie"! Also, the child in the piece was so off the charts annoyingly brattish that my wife and I were eventually rooting for the Babadook to strangle the little bastard and put an end to the misery - ours and the mother's. We were even joking that he in actual fact WAS the monster in the film and that when the Babadook eventually turned up he'd flee the house in abject terror.
The film also really dragged on from about half-way, to the point where we were both actually waiting impatiently for all the mayhem to really get going.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I'm Australian and am therefore much more familiar with both the film industry in Australia, as well as the nuances of Australian culture. Either way it just meant that I didn't really view the film as the kind of high art horror flick that others seem to have bestowed up on it. But then, most Aussies tend to feel that way about how our films often get received abroad, as if the 'foreign' aspect gives them some kind of mysterious cache that seems almost laughable to us. I've seen films that were more or less ignored or justifiably panned in Australia received with open arms in the USA and elsewhere by people who couldn't 'get' how lame the films were through Australian eyes. Look at the Mad Max films - they were throwaway and poorly written apocalyptic schlock churned out on minuscule budgets, yet have gained an overseas reputation since then that's entirely undeserved.
SPOILER ALERT One other thing that makes the film even more laughable is the manner in which one has to suspend disbelief at the manner in which the boy goes from being an utter and uncontrollable little monster through the first half of the film to the quiet and loving voice of reason and calm as his mother gradually starts losing it through the latter part. As child psychology goes, it 'don't play'! Also, my wife and I would have bet the house on the fact that old lady next door was going to get cut up by the mother towards the end, so we were bitterly disappointed to find that she didn't end up mincemeat on the front steps or in the foyer.
Lastly, there actually was a murder after the film, when I grabbed my wife and started strangling her, screaming 'Babadook dook dook' at her (seriously, you don't think that's a hilarious delivery from a supposedly horrific figure? It's up there with Peter Boyle's Frankenstein monster dancing to 'Putting on the Ritz') for getting me to watch this silly film on the premise that it was supposed to be one of the 'scariest' films in recent memory! PS to William Friedkin - what have you been smoking?