Highly Disappointed

Rating: 6/10 (5 April 2015)

Hype is a dangerous thing, especially in this day and age where your access to hype is as far reaching as you choose to make it. It also doesn't help when you get blind adoration from critiques seeking artistic integrity by lauding anything art-house or indie.
I don't mean to completely dismiss "Babadook." Rare is the contemporary horror movie that seeks to do more than make a few things go bump in the night, and this film is rife with symbolism and metaphor. Amelia is a struggling single mother coping with a difficult 6-year-old (Sam) and the postpartum depression that has plagued her ever since her husband died while driving her to the hospital to birth their son. Her struggle is tragic and heartrending. And during the first act, the movie does well with getting us to feel the immense stress that comes with her every day life.
But a good idea does not a good film make. The editing is incredibly poor, cutting out unnecessary bits of conversations and jumping clumsily through scenes that require a different pacing all together to be effective. The director is a huge fan of having a dramatic scene cut abruptly (music and all) right when it's becoming emotionally involving for the audience, and shifting tone completely. "It's just mimicking her fragile broken state" you may cry, to which I would answer yes, maybe, but you can only use that effect so many times before it's just shoddy film-making.
And finally, "Babadook" is completely devoid of scares. Any scene that might be on the verge of making your hairs stand on end is painfully corrupted by the monster's laughable noises or cheesy special effects. In fact, on more than one occasion, the film even fell victim to one of horror's most terrifying enemies: the unintentional laugh.
Don't get me wrong. I love horror. Even bad, campy horror. But the pedestal this movie was put on really set me up for a dour disappointment. I guess I'm not someone who's easily impressed by something just because it didn't come out of Hollywood.