I'm Not At All Sure What Actually Happened - But I Liked It!

Rating: 9/10 (15 March 2018)

The first thing that comes to mind looking back on this movie after watching it is that every time Bugsy appeared on the screen I winced. Bugsy was the family pet. A cute dog. And this is a horror movie. And you know what happens to cute dogs in horror movies. Anyway ...
What a well crafted story this was. A young mother and her young son (Amelia and Samuel, played by Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman) are dealing with his upcoming birthday, I say "dealing with" because it's not a happy day for them. Samuel's father died on the very day Samuel was born, in a car crash getting his mother to the hospital. What becomes clear in the movie is that the father's death continues to torment both of them. As the movie starts, Samuel is a troubled child - unreasonably afraid of monsters (under the bed, in the closet and everywhere else) and with massive behavioural problems that make him unwelcome at school, unwelcome even by his aunt, friendless. He throws tantrums at the drop of a hat. And Amelia can't control him. One night he asks Amelia to read him a bed time story, and he picks a book called "The Babadook." Amelia doesn't know where it came from. It's bloody violent and graphic. And it unleashes something.
That much I understood, but from that point on I became confused about what exactly was happening. But even if confused, I was admiring this movie. It's one of the better horror movies I've seen in recent years. It leaves a great deal to the imagination. It ends on a somewhat ambiguous note, letting the viewer interpret this in pretty much whatever way the viewer chooses. Was the Babadook real? Was it a figment of Amelia's imagination? I really don't know. What I do know is that this is a creepy and scary movie. What I also know is that Davis and Wiseman handled their roles very well, indeed. I especially appreciated the way they seemed to "flip" about halfway through - with Samuel increasingly controlled and Amelia increasingly out of control. And in the midst of the horror" - you feel sympathy for both Amelia and Samuel, because of the husband/father's death, and how that affects how they feel about themselves and how they feel about each other and how others look at them and treat them. Regardless of whether the Babadook is real or not, they both obviously have their monsters to deal with, buried deep within them and coming out every year I would think as the "birthday" approaches.
I give credit to the writers and to director Jennifer Kent. Kent set a great tone and atmosphere throughout the movie, and the writers avoided making this any sort of graphic, slasher-type horror movie and instead focused on Amelia and Samuel and how they dealt with this terrifying situation. This is truly a fine addition to the horror genre. (9/10)