Excellent spooky thriller with good production values

Rating: 8/10 (11 January 2015)

This is a great film - directed and written by Jennifer Kent using, in part I believe, a city arts grant in Adeleide after some experience working on a Lars Von Trier film. The Babadook lives up to its critical praise with excellent pacing, camera-work, style, suspense and character development.
The picture follows the aftermath of a widowed, down-at-the-heels care worker and her dysfunctional son, who are both being stalked, and invaded, by an evil creature from a children's book. The evil spirit, known as 'the Babadook' is sort of a homage to twenties German expressionist horror, and the overall tone is at times similar to the Shining, or the Exorcist.
In fact, a few key scenes are overly derivative of those classic films, but its undeniable that Kent knows how to craft just enough suspense, foreboding, and helplessness to create a genuinely remarkable film. Its not without blood and violence, of course, but the film keeps these elements offscreen, or to a minimum, focussing on psychological terror and, well, darkness.
This film only shows its limited budget in terms of its small cast, as the delivery and cinematography are all first rate, every camera move and editing sequence feels like the work of a quality filmmaker. Worth watching, although not if you're overly 'afraid of scary movies.'
The writer/director also offers signed copies of the haunted book from the films official website if you are a fan of this movie.