A Movie About the Greatest Horror of All

Rating: 8/10 (19 April 2015)

If you can get over your initial disappointment that "The Babadook" is not the scarefest it was built up to be, you might just find yourself enjoying a well-made and even groundbreaking -- in its own modest way -- psychological thriller.
And don't get me wrong: "The Babadook" is scary, it's just not scary in the visceral horror movie kind of way. It's scary because it's about mental illness, and anyone who's dealt with illnesses of the mind in real life knows that they are far more horrifying than any monsters or serial killers horror movies can conjure. It's impossible to watch "The Babadook" and not experience it as a kind of gender-reversed version of "The Shining." But it has enough originality to stand on its own apart from Kubrick's classic. And it's that gender reversal that makes "The Babadook" so horrifying and so unlike any other horror movie I can think of. How often are mothers the monsters, and how much scarier does it get from a child's point of view than to find your chief enemy being the one person who you take for granted will protect you at all costs.
Indeed, "The Babadook" is almost too effective at times. I'm particularly bothered by films about children in peril, and especially films that dwell on the fear of a child. "The Babadook" is tough to watch at times for this reason, and it came close to crossing the border that separates for me a film that's disturbing in an enjoyable way and one that's not.
I loved the ending of this film, and the suggestion that an emotion like grief is not something to be eradicated but rather something that needs to be attended to and nurtured for the rest of a person's life. You can keep it at bay and not let it dominate you, but the only way to do that is to acknowledge that it's there every once in a while.
Grade: A-