Shallow, disappointing junk

Rating: 2/10 (27 April 2015)

Although interesting to look at, The Babadook is an appalling mess of a horror film, with irritating characters, a lack of genuine suspense, and a style that's more likely to evoke mild bemusement than sincere dread and terror.
The premise is a familiar one. Young Samuel (Noah Wiseman) is seemingly haunted by a spirit that no one else can see, and of course no one else believes said spirit exists, least of all his mother Amelia (Essie Davis), who's struggling with the sudden, violent death of her husband and sees Samuel's "ghost" as Samuel's way of dealing with his own grief.
Things kick into a higher gear when Samuel finds a book called The Babadook on his bookshelf. No kids' book this, The Babadook is about an out-to-get-you entity, complete with terrifying artwork and menacing words. It's so scary that Amelia can't stomach reading it all to Samuel. This ain't no ordinary book. The Babadook will come a-calling, first to the child in disguise and then to the kid's mother; then it'll just do it's haunting thing. The better to drive you insane, my dear.
Samuel begins to act out. I got the impression that he'd been having behavioral issues (likely stemming from his dad's death), but once the book arrives, those issues increase infinitely in intensity. He misbehaves in school, at the park, and at his cousin's party; at the latter, he pushes his obnoxious, teasing cousin out of a treehouse, which enrages his aunt. So much for family and understanding, right? Eventually, Amelia is able to secure some medication for Samuel to keep him calm, but soon the spectre of the Babadook is in her head, too.
A few points. First, even in recent memory there have been plenty of nobody-believes-I'm-being-haunted plots. Even with the children's book as a hook, this story is well worn indeed. But what really counts against it is that the kid is so over-the-top horrible from the beginning of the movie that it's nigh impossible to feel any real sympathy for him - until and unless the plot says it must be so. Samuel is, to put it bluntly, a real jerk. He's mean to everyone and disobeys his mom constantly.
Sure, we can explain this away by pointing to the dad's death (he died in an accident on the way to the hospital when Samuel was born) - but since he never knew his dad, it feels like the logic is twisting to suit a screenwriter's desperate needs. Samuel is so obnoxious that he spends about the first twenty minutes screaming "MOM" at the top of his lungs. I'm sure you parents out there can relate to how wonderfully appealing this sound is. It's so nice to be wanted.
When Amelia herself inevitably becomes haunted by the Babadook as well, things get progressively worse. She's angry! She's normal! She's loving! She's cruel! She's seeing things! She's experiencing reality! It's a whirlwind of lazy, lazy writing. And, true to the trope, no one believes Amelia's claims that Something is happening - not the school, which clearly doesn't care about Samuel's well being; not her sister, who doesn't stop to consider that Amelia may truly need her help; not the Child Services people, who drop in unannounced and have no idea why this person is cleaning the kitchen because of a hole in the wall that doesn't exist. No one cares. Maybe that's because everyone involved saw the first part of the film, in which neither mother nor son comes off as particularly sympathetic.
I got the impression that this movie merely needed a better director (than Jennifer Kent), writer (Kent), and actors (Davis and especially Wiseman). That's not asking too much, right? In the right hands, The Babadook would have been a stylish, Gothic psychological drama, but instead it's a run-of-the-mill plot sunk by aimless direction and a real lack of panache. There are just too many ludicrous scenes in this film to stomach. William Friedkin, of all people, claims that he's never seen a more terrifying film than this one; we can thus infer that Mr. Friedkin has never seen his own horror classic, The Exorcist.