What is The Babadook? You decide.

Rating: 6/10 (1 December 2014)

A supernatural horror story about a malevolent book character who enters reality to persecute a single mother and her emotionally troubled son, or a psychological drama that charts the behavioural issues of a fatherless child and the consequent mental breakdown of his stressed out mother? Eerie Aussie movie The Babadook is open to interpretation, refusing to give any concrete solutions to the many questions raised, making it both an intriguing experience and a rather frustrating one at the same time.
Given the evidence, I'm convinced that The Babadook, the dark creature that invades the home of Amelia (Essie Davis) and Samuel (Noah Wiseman) after they read a mysterious children's pop-up book, must be a figment of the imagination, a monster of the mind that stems from a case of severe depression, repressed guilt and sheer exhaustion; for the most part, the film certainly works best when seen this way (the alternative being too silly to comprehend), but as the film enters its final act, this viewpoint still raises issues for which I fail to find satisfactory answers, particularly in the effects laden final act that sees Samuel thrown about the house by an invisible force and Amelia suddenly reverting from raving lunatic back to caring mother after confronting the monster (after which she keeps it in the basement and feeds it worms?!?!).
Thankfully, despite the whole ambiguous 'is it real or is she barking mad' approach being a well-worn horror cliché (The Shining, anyone?) and not working quite as well as it might, writer/director Jennifer Kent conducts proceedings with such an assured hand that the film still proves an entertaining watch, conjuring up some excellent macabre imagery and a chilling atmosphere of foreboding, helped immensely by a convincing lead performance from Davis as the extremely fraught Amelia and a passable turn by youngster Wiseman as her thoroughly irritating son (by the end of the film, I wanted to feed him to The Babadook as well!).