Thinking person's horror film

Rating: 8/10 (10 March 2018)

I'd heard good things about The Babadook, the directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent. The sets, cinematography and acting are all top shelf, and the story is unconventional.
Six years after her husband is killed in an automobile accident, widow and mother Amelia (Essie Davis) is barely hanging on by a thread. She struggles to contain her young son Sam (Noah Wiseman), whose behavioral issues are creating conflicts at school at with family members. Sam has nightmares of the "monster under the bed" type, but when a disturbing children's book called "The Babadook" shows up unexpectedly, it seems as though the monsters may be real.
The Babadook is not a typical horror film. If you need to have the plot neatly wrapped up and all loose ends accounted for, you're going to be disappointed.
*Spoilers follow*
The Babadook is not a Hollywood monster or manifestation of evil spirits, it's a metaphor for Amelia's crushing grief. It's a version of the "Enemy Within", and is a manifestation of Amelia's grief over losing her husband, her anger at her son, and her guilt over those feelings.
As the book says, once the Babadook comes, you can't get rid of him, because denying him only makes him stronger. "You start to change when I get in/The Babadook growing under your skin..."
It's not a perfect film, and the pace can be a bit tedious, but it's still worth a look, or a second look if you're one of the many viewers who didn't really understand what the director was trying to communicate.