Very spooky experience, better than assumed after having read the synopsis

Rating: 8/10 (5 October 2014)

I saw this film at the Imagine (sf/horror/fantasy) filmfestival Amsterdam 2014. It was a very spooky experience, gradually speeding up to get creepier and creepier. The son's behavior was annoying some of the time, asking for attention and often playing dangerous games, however not unusual for his age. The only minus point is that the final scene left me puzzled, and seemed not a logical consequence of what happened before.
Being a very young, presumably inexperienced actor, the boy does very well. He is annoying some of the time, but that is an inherent part of his role. On its turn, his behavior could not be helped and was a logical consequence of his compulsive eager to defend his mother from evil, becoming apparent after having found the book of Babadook and reading it together. He made his weaponry out of miscellaneous household material, which was a very nice touch, certainly serving as icing on the cake of his superior performance.
Of course, a bed moved, some doors creaked, often there were very dark, human-shaped figures on walls and ceilings, lights faltered or died suddenly, and more such standard tools of the (horror) trade. But it was never over-the-top in the context of movies of this genre. Such events became more frequent later on in the story, until a climax just before the final very quiet scene. At first, one could have thought that the events we witnessed, were only present in the imagination of the mother, but some of the later experiences are shared between mother and son, like the aforementioned moving bed.
All in all, in spite of the seemingly less attractive story that I derived from the synopsis beforehand, the end result was much better than I had expected. Added to that, the mother and son acted spotless and believable. They were sometimes annoying and did not behave sensibly, but that is obviously an integral part of their role and fits in the story line, so no problem.
(*** ALERT *** SPOILER AHEAD ***) The only thing I failed to understand was the peaceful ending. It seems related to delivering a bowl of worms in the cellar, which is a bit usual to say the least. This happened on the boy's birthday, also remembering the day the father died while driving on the way to maternity hospital. A party was to be held later that day (his cousin would/could not come as he pushed her lately and made her fall). Mother and son eat peacefully in the garden, and then the credits appear, so we'll never know whether this party is for real, nor whether there were many attendants (doubtful, given the son's deviant behavior in the past, when eventually no one wanted to play with him). We also have no information how and why the disturbances ended, nor what could have been the answer to the mother's repeated question "What is it that you want??". Anyway, something seems to have satisfied the hostile visitor, and the bowl of worms definitely has something to do with it. Yet, all this may be the most logical (is that relevant in a horror movie?) wrap up of the plot. I certainly can live with this as a solution, given the thriller qualities of the preceding scenes.