Real Madness?

Rating: 9/10 (21 December 2014)

This is a study on guilty, regret, and fear. A mother must live with the pain of losing a dear member of the family and the possible hate for another. At first, it all appears to be about a very troubled and troublesome child. He embodies everything that we fear our children can become, unstoppable brats who live to cause trouble of every possible kind. This boy doesn't fit anywhere, disliked by just about everyone who he runs into.
Then one day a book shows up, and the focus changes. This supernatural and creepy picture book launches an attack on both mother and son. It is all now about protecting each other. From the beginning Essie Davis has done a superb job portraying the stressed mother, and as madness begins to take over, she decays into a crazy woman who might just do about anything she can to stop the impending threat. Unfortunately, madness seems to be winning, and all of her fears are now projected onto her son. This doesn't seem to be heading into any direction but absolute disaster.
Ms. Kent gets about everything right. First, we see the pressures brought upon family member by the accident and growing up unable to deal with the loss. Truly, everyone is affected, and the boy is the target because he did after, all, survived that traumatic event. Every shadow is dangerous, every noise a sign that something or someone lurks in the shadows. Is the book real? Has it been imagined? Who created it? The mother is most interesting character because she is after a caregiver who can't or won't do a good job both with her professional care or her own son. Then, she reveals in a key scene that she used to be a writer; therefore, we suspect she can be behind the creation of that book because she has plenty of imagination and the forces that trigger that imagination come from real pain and fears.
It is a dark trip all the way to the end, and this has to be one of the strangest, most powerful explorations of guilt and terror in the movies. It makes the mother in "Carrie" almost benign. This one lashes out physically and verbally and is torn by forces she can't understand or stop.
"The Babbadook" is a powerful work because it feels real, based on real forces, and it shows unexplainable moments like the best works of horrors do, but it wouldn't work without a great performance, and that is Ms. Essie Davis, an actress who is capable of giving us whatever is needed to understand what the character feels, needs, or most importantly, in this case, fears.