Slow cryptic eerie thriller, smarter than most

Rating: 7/10 (26 December 2014)

Australian cinema takes what could be a very cheesy premise and spins it into a psychological thriller with The Babadook.
The film The Babadook is about a widowed mother Amelia, grappling with her husband's sudden and violent death and trying to raise her son Samuel.
Samuel is trying child with severe behavioral issues and is a difficult child for a mother to love, especially given the circumstances. As Amelia tries desperately to manage Samuel she must also battle his fear of a monster known as the babadook which she swiftly realizes may be more than a figment of her son's imagination.
Essie Davis is truly believable as the depressed Amelia coping terribly as a mother. Samuel is a terror and gives other horror kids in film a run for their money (I'm looking at you Damien). Given the annoying child Noah Wiseman portrays in the role Samuel, you can almost forgive her for her exhaustion. Samuel as a character might be one of the most taxing children ever featured in a horror movie. After ten minutes of him on the screen I prayed that Amelia would toss him out the car, or hit him over the head with one of his contraptions, which I believe was Kent's intention.
Jennifer Kent's horror film is multi-layered and complex, playing into the psychological toll of being a mother under dire circumstances. Her film is perfectly balanced between The Babadook as film about a sinister being haunting a family and as a psychological thriller. Kent's story is well crafted and slow, relying on true horror complemented by eerie music and cryptic acting rather than cheap and lazy jump scares.
The method in which Kent displays a dark force lurking in the shadows is much slower and denser and is less literally eventful than other films of this subject matter. It actually may be dense to a fault with most of the understated plot clues going over audiences' heads after just one watch. The Babadook is subtly frightening and could be too nuanced for average horror film lovers but should be a hit with the intellectual crowd.
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