Don't believe the hype

Rating: 5/10 (19 November 2015)

A woman is involved in a crash. It's a nightmare based on something that happens years ago. On their way to the hospital to give birth her husband dies in a car crash. Years later we meet her again and the her now young son. She works at a convalescent hospital and hasn't gotten over her husband's death. The kid plays games about being a magician and also builds weapons and runs around saying he will protect the mother. But he's also problematic. He gets in trouble at school, with neighbors, family. He looks creepy and drives the mother crazy but in good modern fashion she barely dares raise her voice, let alone give him a good and deserved beating. She takes him out of school, and some child services people arrive. Finally she takes him to a psychiatrists and gets some tranquilizers for him and her.
At some point the kid finds a creepy pop-up book called "Mr. Babadook" about some creepy guy dressed in black with lots of teeth who wants to be let in the house and warns of killing people. She hides the book but it appears again. The kid becomes obsessed with it seeing Babadook everywhere. The next time she reads it, it now presents a woman who kills her dog, a child, and herself. She, too, has a dog, and as all dogs in movies, it doesn't end well. This new story will become somewhat prophetic as the babadook does enter into her body. The kid will get to enact his fantasies of protector of the mother.
On the face of it, The Babadook is lame psychological thriller that's frustrating and infuriating. Who wants to see bad miserable parents and their obnoxious kids? So you end up rooting for babadook to kill these two in gruesome ways. And that's a problem for any movie, if your two main and almost only characters aren't particularly likable. This movie is not scary in spite of what some odd reviews claim. The babadook doesn't really show up all that much. His voice though is pretty creepy.
We are led to believe then that there is some very deep meaning to this movie, and there are plenty of interpretation on IMDb. If anything perhaps, this is about the repressed desire mothers have to kill their annoying son, who knows. I don't think this movie aims to lead us to one single interpretation. The problem is that I couldn't care less whether this movie has the deepest religious symbolism or presents some radical political criticism. I didn't care for the characters, nor for the story; I didn't connect. I imagine that single mothers will enjoy this movie, or parents with problematic kids, or folks who feel like their life is driving them crazy.
The question I wonder about is whether this director is a good director or not. On the one hand, the story should have lent itself to a better, scarier movie. On the other hand, with few characters and a pretty basic story the director managed to make more out of what she really had. The Babadook enforced my belief that it is extremely difficult to make a good movie about madness, perhaps even impossible.