Less jump-scares but similarly scary

Rating: 7/10 (1 November 2014)

Amelia lives only with her son Samuel, who's still afraid of monsters under the bed or in the closet. She proves him repeatedly there's nothing to be afraid of. But he keeps on making a big thing of his fear. This adds to her's own stress from the loss of her husband. One day Amelia tells Sam he can choose a book to rad as bedtime story. He chooses a book Mister Babadook, which scared Sam so much. Amelia takes look at the pages. It says the Babadook will come to a kid demanding him to let it in, then asks the same to the kid's mother, and then it'll leave its disguise and haunt them. The last pages are empty. Amelia then hides the book from Sam. But Sam gets terrified about The Babadook more and more in the next few days, so Amelia tears the Babadook's images from the book and tosses them all in the garbage.
After that Samuel starts to blame The Babadook for his mischiefs. Amelia feels he's only making it up until she starts to feel weird things. One day the front door is knocked. There's nobody when Amelia opens it. The knocking continues. When Amelia opens the door again, she finds the book with the torn pages glued back on. Also the empty pages are filled with images of the Babadook shadowing the mother killing her son. Amelia then burns the book but she gets more paranoid and stressed as weirder things happen that makes Amelia afraid to sleep. She then stays up all night for two nights in a row. But as Samuel asks for her motherly care, Amelia has episodes of sudden anger outbursts with her voice changing at times. The second night, she catches Sam calling their old Parkinsonian neighbor Mrs. Roach.
Amelia dismisses her, but continues her rage by killing their dog and then chasing after Samuel. She catches up to him but he knocks her out by throwing something hard at her. Amelia wakes up tied with Sam refusing to leave her. Her episodes make her choke Sam as he gets near to hug her. But her inner self wins as Sam strokes her cheek. She then vomits something black and Sam says that she's free. But then Sam tells her she can't make the Babadook go away, and Sam is dragged away by an invisible force. She confronts the force arguing that it's trespassing her house. The Babadook manifests itself as a shadow but then runs away to the basement as Amelia doesn't run from it. Things then seem to go back to normal. Amelia and Sam prepares Sam's seventh birthday party, which was never celebrated due to it's the same day as Sam's father's death who died in an accident taking Amelia to hospital on her delivery day. Amelia collects worms and maggots and bring them to feed something in the basement.
For a horror, the story nicely puts a balance in the mix between the horror, drama and thriller aspects. Basing the ghost/monster character on a children's book is also a nice step in serving a fresh take on the horror scene. It also serves nicely in blending in with the family drama aspect where there is the dilemma situation of whether to believe the kid's statements or not. There's also the question of whether to escalate the means in educating the child or not.
Not locking the Babadook to a certain narrower definition definitely increases the mystery of the ghost character and distances the movie from it's basic premise of children's imagined fear. In a way, one can view this movie as the horror opposite of the children friendly animation Monsters, Inc (2001) which starts from the same basic premise.
Being a drama-horror-thriller, this movie doesn't focus the scares on the all-so-common sudden shocks or also known as jump-scares. Instead the movie forces the viewers to build up anticipation by abundantly presenting depictions of dark rooms and thrilling sound effects. Unfortunately, the other common horror ingredients like lights going on and off, possessions, shrieks and hallucinations all piles up as the movie nears its ending. At that time the horror can retain its scary element only by keeping the Babadook a mystery to the viewers, even after the main characters confront it.
The acting is surprisingly good in overall. Honestly I was expecting kind of lower acting quality due to there are only Australian talents less known to me. But Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman can really grab the fact that the story only focus at both of their characters and played their roles convincingly. They can give real enough expressions covering the dramatic sides, the thriller anticipations and the horror scares.
For me The Babadook well deserves a 7 out of 10 score. A recommendation is a yes for me due to it being a fresh new take on the horror scene, with less jump-scares but the similar weight of being scary.