Rather Generic and Rote.......

Rating: 5/10 (6 January 2015)

Brief thoughts. Not meant to be a proper review or analysis......
Despite properly congealing its lead character's psychological state with the supernatural, The Babadook is short on imagination and shortchanges when it comes to scares. The film's dramatic arc is obvious and routine, its emotion is bland, and the metaphor does not amount to anything more interesting than an overtly sentimental 'stare your fears right in the face' sentiment. It takes a hour and a half to get to a point that says or does very little, and rarely gets the tension or suspense going strong. This is even evident in the horror aspect of its climax in which the effectiveness is zapped because it takes the corniness of the traps from Home Alone and mixes it with the real-or-imagined psychological angle that is now feeling tired. The cross cutting between the two here doesn't feel natural.
With that said, it ends on 'somewhat' of a happy note which goes against the grain of modern bleak horror endings, so it's somewhat refreshing, although I would argue the whole point of horror films is to be scary, or disturbing, or make one uncomfortable.. and that is usually best accomplished with a downbeat end note. The Babadook most shows why Roman Polanski in his famous psychological horror trilogy (Repulsion, The Tenant, and Rosemary's Baby) understood how to create suspense, tension, and scares properly while having a flowing narrative and dramatic arc, all of which it sadly lacks.
The Babadook reminded me most of Darren Aronofsky's Black Swan (2010), another Polanski-inspired film that doesn't understand what makes the sub-genre work. Hell, I would even say the often maligned Intruders (2011) is better than this film. It was never overt about its crazy vs. non crazy angle in the film, had a great sense of Guillermo del Toro-like style and dazzling montages, as well as a well-rendered metaphor about fear and loss. Even if its meaning may have been similar with The Babadook, it didn't have to spoon feed it, and used its metaphor to reveal things about its narrative and character.
So, The Babadook is not scary or suspenseful enough to work as a horror film, and seems too obvious and thin in its narrative arc to work as a drama. It may work as a psychological portrait, yet lacks a good punch. While I didn't hate it, it didn't move me on either spectrum. Rating 5.0 / 10 or a C.
PS. More of the actor Daniel Henshall would have been welcome, too. He gave one of the scariest performances I have seen in my life in the Australian true crime-movie, The Snowtown Murders (2011).