You can't get rid of "The Babadook".

Rating: 9/10 (27 March 2017)

With a name like "The Babadook", this film is expected to be a story about an urban legend becoming reality. However, what Jennifer Kent presents is far more than an ordinary, creepy tale. What "The Babadook" depicts is the projection of the distressed human mind, of inner fears and despair. These feelings are manifested through a struggling single mother, Amelia, and her six-year-old child, Samuel, who just so happens to be obsessed with learning of his deceased father. His inquisitions become an ongoing burden for the mother, who has never overcome the death of her husband. What we witness is a very realistic scenario of a mother trying to cope with a troublesome child and a young boy trying to grow up with the absence of a father. Both characters find solace in their nightly bedtime stories, until one particular book obstructs their ritual.
Kent's tale of a monster that preys on your biggest vulnerabilities goes beyond anything we witness in nightmares. If you've ever experienced sleep paralysis, you will surely identify with Amelia. The monster that haunts her son also torments her, leaving her unable to sleep because closing her eyes means entering a world of constant agony, causing her to be paralyzed by fear. Kent manages to place you in the home of these two characters, making you battle with reality, fantasy, and the subconscious.
Through the use of color and lighting you will be transported into the land of the Babadook- a place where only dull colors exist and happiness is unheard of. Kent's continuous use of blue and green hues add to the film's feeling of melancholy and the characters' trance-like state of living. Kent also makes sure to incorporate shadows in the most disturbing of places, playing with your panic of unveiling the Babadook.
"The Babadook" is labeled as a psychological horror because it truly plays with your perceptions, confronting you with the question of whether the Babadook is real or simply the fragment of an agitated woman's imagination. If you're looking for a horror film that features the typical killing- machine monster, then "The Babadook" is not it. However, if you understand the monsters that are capable of forming inside the human mind, you will surely accept Jennifer Kent's directorial debut as a smart, intriguing, yet horrifying film.