The Babadook's at Home

Rating: 9/10 (24 June 2016)

"The Babadook" grows on you. I saw it one night, and thought it was just OK. But next morning, reconsidering the tedium I experienced in a few spots which I thought were mere horror film clichés, I realized they really were psycho-plot points, and my appreciation for the movie changed considerably. When we remember those moments as well as a couple of scenes that seem incongruous or unresolved (as when the mother finds a photograph in which the face of her husband has been scratched and, after facing and shouting to her little son, their relation goes from tender to wild and back) , you know that the movie is not only telling you a horror tale (because the Babadook is certainly an entity freely moving in the shadows of the house where the protagonists live, and in their neighbor's home) but also paints a frenetic psychotic portrait, since the beginning when the little boy warns his mother of the intentions of the evil presence. Produced in Australia and directed by Jennifer Kent, many persons find a connection between the movie and Polanski, Tarkovsky and even "Home Alone, but as other reviewers elsewhere do, Andrzej Zulawski's "Possession" and Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" were the two movies I thought of. In both films and "The Babadook" there is a strong connection between horror and the psychological disintegration of the leading characters, which in the end denies all Aristotelian progression and undermine whatever happy ending you may imagine. Essie Davis as the mother and Noah Wiseman as the son (I hope he does not turn into another case of child actor going bananas) are very good, and illustrator Alex Juhasz' concepts of the Babadook and its book are really outstanding. A fine cinematic experience.