a terrifying movie about being a parent, or a child, or both

Rating: 10/10 (8 August 2015)

William Friedkin, in his glowing adulation of the film, said that "there's Psycho, Dialbolique, and now The Babadook" (may not be an exact quote, but close enough). I would've thrown in as most directly The Shining. While the house isn't a big part of what makes the creature the Babadook come out - not that the gray walls and drab appearance don't help to add to the atmosphere - the way that the parent-child relationship breaks down into murderous madness does. Perhaps it's like if one takes seriously the whole "Book-As-Demon-Maker" from the Evil Dead movies as well: you open it up, read it, and things start to materialize in the most horrifying ways possible. But this isn't some people in a cabin in the woods - this is a widowed, single mother and her child, with the kid already a little eccentric (he's cute at being a magician, not so much wielding a small cross-bow, which me makes himself), and this book just amplifies everything wrong in their lives. Will their bond and promise to protect each other hold?
The book arrives seemingly by some stranger, right on the doorstep for Amelia (Elise Davis) and her son Sam (Noah Wiseman). She reads to her son, as all good mothers do, but when she reads this book it terrifies him before she can finish it, with graphic images of mayhem and violence and the macabre. She tears it up, but it comes back to her all taped together and with *new* pages, detailing in practically prophetic terms what she will do to her dog, her son and herself. She burns it, and seems like the smart thing (except what to show the skeptical police force?) so she tries to cope and get on with her days. But things get frayed with her sister and her friends, and Amelia starts to... see things. Or have very vivid nightmares. It first starts with her son - the usual trope we see of the kid seeing things are the parent not believing him - and then it goes to her. Oh man, does it ever!
The Babadook's triumph is in creating images and scenes and set-pieces where Amelia's frame of mind goes downhill, maybe not too fast but certainly fast enough with a six year old boy in the house. The boy is a fascinating character in how perception of him changes as the movie goes on; at first, he's almost kind of annoying, though not any more than your average 6-year old full of energy and vigor and whatnot, but he's also one of those distant and alone kids (no father, seemingly no friends, a disconnect with his cousin, and, as it's pointed out in almost darkly comic terms, a very quick response to adults with no filter). What's great is to see how he not so much changes but fulfills certain alluded-to set ups early in the movie that one thinks is just little things for the character to do. It's all the more disturbing because of his age; any older, and it would almost take on the qualities of a coming-of-age film for what he has to put up with with his mother.
And Amelia... this character is really the main one, though it's arguable the mother and son are on equal footing as leads. The director Jennifer Kent really gets the audience into her frame of mind: vulnerable, broken in some way, healed up over time but the wounds could be ripped open, and it stems back to the loss of her husband (Sam's father of course), and in the way it leaves her by herself all the more when her son is off at her sister's or at school. There's a scene were we just watch her going about her day, walking around some stores, sitting in a car and happening to see another couple making out. Even a moment where she is sexually 'alone' emphasizes her state of mind, to a degree. All through this early part Davis makes Amelia real and strong and forceful along with those other qualities in the writing. So that by the time this book really rears its ugly head, she's in a position to try and fight it, but how can anyone fight the BABA-DOOK-DOOK-DOOK?
The imagery Kent creates is staggering. She starts with TV - why are there old silent movies on the TV, would they be on, hey, why carp - and then unfolds it into seeing things in a neighbor's house, then on the walls, the ceilings, in her nightmares with her dead husband. Though it would seem the Babadook is a real demon/entity in this world, it's a constant question, especially in the second and third acts, if this woman is really losing her mind and what she sees is just magnified, wretched manifestations of everything turned upside down and blackened. For myself, after seeing horror films for so many years it takes a lot to get me scared. This one has the goods: it gets you invested in the characters, their relationship, and then gets to work making the mind throw up on itself with a bogeyman that is most terrifying for what it can unleash in the psychological sense.
The Babadook may not quite be the new Psycho as Friedkin puts it - the ending is a little too ambiguous, perhaps, though not in any way bad, one just has to sit on it for a long time - but is it really good and worth watching and stop what you're doing and look it up on Netflix? Yes.