A movie about grief.

Rating: 8/10 (17 October 2016)

This movie is not only a very well crafted thriller, but I think it was a very poignant metaphor about the nature of grief.
A single mother, Amelia, is struggling to deal with her emotionally disturbed seven-year-old son, Samuel. As it transpires, Amelia's husband died in a car crash on the way to the hospital on the same day that Samuel was born.
Amelia is clearly not coping. She is exhausted and run ragged, all of her relationships are suffering, she flies into a rage whenever someone mentions her husband, and she pulls her son out of school after he starts screaming at an invisible person he calls 'The Babadook'.
The 'Babadook' is a creepy little children's book that hits Amelia a little too close to home. Samuel insists that the Babadook is real, warns that it kill them both, and tells his mother to "not let it in." Then the horror begins, expertly building-up via a psychological slow burn to a very satisfying conclusion.
I believe that the Babadook itself is a metaphor for the nature of grief, and in particular, pathological grief. Amelia's grief over her husband has absolutely crippled her, had a catastrophic effect on her ability to function, and prevented her from bonding with her son. In the end, it threatens to consume them both, until she finds more appropriate ways of coping.
The production design of this movie (and in particular the design of the book itself) was tremendous.
This was a fantastic little psychological thriller. I wish more horror movies were this clever.