Don't judge a book by its cover

Rating: 10/10 (12 September 2015)

An alternative take on the perennial children's fable, the acclaimed indie-horror from the outback is a deliciously tensive polysemic anecdote with a soul. After 95 minutes with Mr Babadook you'll need the courage to sleep. A rarity in the pluralist postmodern pulp of contemporary arts, the Babadook is not the usual shlock, remake or valorisation of a genre so stuck in the mud it could be quicksand. Obsessional cost-cutting within Western societies have saturated the market - docu-horrors , found-footage spin-offs and awakened cult classics are regularly born (and reborn) as commodities for capital. Opposing as invigoratingly fresh, intelligent and intimate, 'The Babadook' is a daring feature with something to say rather than just something to sell. Gone are the predictable musical accompaniments urging you to crap yourself in your seat. So too the expensive special effects in making the perfect villain for abjection. In comes an ontological score destroying the seams of illusion, stop-motion animation creating the imperfect monster and truly awkward scares. All of this with a purpose, this is a film that knows its audience, a knowledge affirmed by subtle integral nods towards pioneers of the genre.
Jennifer Kent's skin crawling directorial debut converts myth into matter in creating a boogeyman figure that operates in a reversal to orthodoxy. Kent's fairytale monster, rather than asserting parental obedience, is the construct of an adults repressed emotion and negativity. Cultivated by real emotional stress - guilt, grief, denial, loss - the peripherals of the ostensible bugaboo laying in wait under the bed or in the closet craving child candy are forgotten. Mr Babadook prefers the taste of reality.
Cast with minimal quantity, maximum quality, the isolated two-bit Ozzie outfit of mother and child pour passion into their curious and compelling roles. Essie Davis's masterful and macabre representation of a psychologically deteriorating widower from austere to Linda Blair is so strong it drags the spectator into the depths of despair with her.
A metaphorical fermentation of regression, a supernatural manifestation of a loss, a subconscious delve into insanity. There is no right or wrong answer, so to speak, yet there is an encouraging voluntary acquiescence to decipher the text. Without an obligatory preferred meaning to an open-ended narrative, the film is tailored to the individual spectator and not the proletariat of its audience. Everyone has their own demons. Everyone has their own Babadook.