A total disappointment

Rating: 2/10 (19 August 2018)

While the acting was stellar, the story line was flat and the script facile. My daughter and I watched it together, expecting some good scares but it failed to deliver even one for either of us. Descent was scary. The Exorcist was scary. Witch was brilliant and scary. Babadook was not in their league. For one thing, it was predictable throughout. There were too few characters to provide much external or secondary plot. The one possible injection of a romantic interest for the female protagonist was ignored and it was uncertain as to why the potential suitor was even brought into the script. He might have given the lead character a bit more depth and opened more avenues for a spiritual showdown so to speak. The closet and under-the-bed thing was same old, same old, except when the Babadook seems to have attacked them while the mother and child were under the covers, at which point the ghoul does nothing more than say his own name, as if that goofy incantation would shiver our timbers. Instead, it laughably sounded much like a drunken old man pretending he was Topo Gigio. Baba's two physical appearances in the movie are both shining examples of the poor production values in evidence in this movie. In one scene, Baba appears, suddenly, looking like a Hallowe'en mock up of Edward Scissorhands gliding along by his collar on a dry cleaner's pulley along the ceiling, clickety-clack sounds and all, and in the other we only see a bit of a jerkily opening wing in a dark end of the bedroom, which means what? Baba is a dark angel? That his wings suck and don't open well? The ending is ridiculous and a total rip off from Sean of the Dead, except in SOTD, it was funny and a little sentimental. In this movie, it just seemed like the writer ran out of ideas and opted to ask his eight year old for some guidance, and she or he came up with "mud pies". For me, the movie was not scary, was poorly written and scored a 2 out of 10 based solely on the great acting chops shown by the lead and the young boy. I'm astonished at all the fuss about this movie. Total hype.