Female driven Horror with deeper meaning.

Rating: 8/10 (24 January 2016)

Every now and again we stumble across a new and innovative looking film trailer that pricks up our senses, giving us hope that there are still original ideas left in the over troped world of cinema. Trailers, which bring us that feeling which my lucky generation had during the Indie era of filmmaking. Where a story didn't fit a mold that was set years before by the cookie cutter flicks which became the standard. New concepts tackling bigger issues than man saves damsel in distress or god forbid another B.S. horror villain that will spews out the next big franchise. Many moons ago I came across one such trailer (as many on the internet did) called The Babadook (2014). "What the hell is a Babdook?" was an utterance heard anytime I recommended it to family or friends. "Just watch," was always my reply. And with that, let's hop in the Wayback machine and check out a trailer posted many months ago: All caught up. Wonderful. Let's get into it then.
The Babadook, directed by first time feature writer/director Jennifer Kent, tells the story of a single mother named Amelia (played disconcertingly perfect by Essie Davis) who is coming to grips with both the death of her husband as well as the trying needs of her only son Samuel (Noah Wiseman in an unnervingly strong performance), who, after finding a strange pop-up book, believes an evil entity named The Babadook has become more than just a character from the macabre bedtime tale. After strange occurrences around her home coupled with Samuel's increasingly erratic behavior continue, Amelia begins to break. Disturbed by her Samuel's obsession with protecting her from the (possibly) imaginary being, Amelia lapses into a mental state which questions whether there is something wrong with her weapon building son or have her own limit of stress driven her over the edge of sanity.