psychological thriller

Rating: 8/10 (26 March 2018)

The Babadook film is one of a revisionist genre stage, where Jennifer Kent creates a new vision film with the different and unique concepts she introduces in the film. We see horror film concepts such as the possessed women, a final girl, and the abjection of the body. Kent introduces us to a small family consisting of a widowed mother (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), where a demented monster from a children's book called Babadook intrudes their home.
Watching this film we can create a connection between the mother and the babadook. the babadook takes ahold of the mother and we see her hallucinations and lack of sleep, which adds on to her state of psychosis and even an attempt to kill her son. The babadook in the film helps address the underlying issue, of the taboo of struggling mothers who attempt to kill their children because they are mentally ill. Kent does a great way to show this because we see what the mother's perspective and what she is enduring, as well as the outside world's perspective. This is what makes the film so great because of its allegory and the way Kent projects it.
The design of the film is creative as well due to the way the producer portrays the presence of the babadook. At certain points of the film we can see the shadow or silhouette of the babadook coming off the mother. We see the abjection of the human body when the mother throws up black liquid to show her body rejecting the babadook. Overall creates a new image for horror films.