For all the right reasons

Rating: 8/10 (21 October 2015)

If you want a good and true horror movie than I would be doing an injustice if I did not recommend this movie. There are a lot of different horror movies out there: blood and gore, with cheesy or lame set ups like any movie with Jason, Freddy, or Chucky; gritty classics and homages like evil dead or cabin in the woods; or the too joking to be scary or nothing but jump scares like John dies at the end or, well everything else Hollywood sends out and calls horror basically falls into the jump scare category. Even found footage movies seem to be nothing but jump scare after jump scare if they are trying to make it a horror movie. Now don't get me wrong, I like Jason and Freddy. I like cabin in the woods and John dies at the end. I like the old and even the new evil dead. For me though, there is just something special about this movie.
If you are expecting a lot of jump scares than go watch sinister. This movie has few if any that I can recall. This movie reminds me a lot of Oculus, which has some good moments and if you haven't seen I would also recommend. Babadook goes farther though. Babadook to me is if you took Oculus, stripped all the exposition and back story, changed the antagonist thing, removed the father, and then asked Stanley Kubrick to direct the movie as a horror. There really isn't any filler to give us a why. No kids lost in the woods eating cherries or secret realm of demons. The horror plot explanation is "because plot" and that's all we need. Look at silent hill 2 compared to silent hill when they started trying to explain things.
The Babadook is creepy. It is not jump scare scary. You might never jump once. The Babadook is the kind of horror that gets inside you and makes you feel uncomfortable. Whether it is the mother and her plight, the kid and, well the kid is messed, or anything else. It isn't the type of horror to give you a quick thrill. It is the type of horror to get inside you and make you feel uncomfortable, and then haunt you the babadook plot line without ratcheting back anything else. By the end of the movie you should the horror feeling of "did I turn the tap water off" or "did I leave my account logged in and computer still on" kind of discomfort should be present and just hope nobody visits later that night, and knocks, three, times.