Great potential, ends up average

Rating: 6/10 (30 October 2015)

The Babadook is a good horror film. The directing is brilliantly uncanny and unsettling, the music and sound editing work great, the acting is mostly excellent.
The film's build-up is very engaging, although it does include very obvious foreshadowing. Overall, it has a very sad and depressing feel to it. A mother is hugely traumatized by the manner her son was born, and, for about half the movie. the son seems to be indirectly traumatized by the mental state of his mother. The myth of the "babadook" is really just a tool through which we can see the gradual degradation of a broken, depressed mind. It does not really exist, we are merely looking at the world through the eyes of a person who gave up on life long ago, as is pretty clear from the symbolic contrast which lies heavy in specific scenes.
This impression is the one i got until the movie started to take the boogeyman figure too seriously. That's also what was making the movie great. At the finale, however, it decides to discard any originality and greatness by becoming a below average horror flick, an embarrassing exorcist wannabe. The babadook is ultimately real, so the film aims to find a place amidst the hundreds of devil/demon/poltergeist stories we hear only too often. Nothing fresh, nothing new, nothing interesting.
The ending and overall conclusion to the mystery is extremely disappointing, as if someone purposefully tried to destroy the film's quality. That doesn't take away from the great directing and acting though, so the film ends up being just above average.