You're Entertainment Level will Be Based on How Scary You Find It

Rating: Null/10 (23 April 2015)

The Babadook (2014)
** (out of 4)
Australian horror film about a mother (Essie Davis) living with her young son (Noah Wiseman) and both are still suffering from the violent death of her husband seven years earlier. The boys is haunted by an overactive imagination but things take a turn for the worse when a book called Mister Babadook shows up and soon a monster too.
THE BABADOOK has pretty much taken over the horror community with some calling it the scariest movie since THE EXORCIST. I'm curious, why does every new scary movie get the label "scariest movie since THE EXORCIST?" Why not THE SHINING or some more recent scary movie? Either way, sadly THE BABADOOK ended up being one of the most disappointing horror movies in recent memory for a number of reasons. The biggest is the fact that I really didn't find a single scene scary or intense. Obviously with a movie like this the quality level is going to depend on whether or not it scares you and sadly this one just didn't do the trick.
More on that in a bit but I actually thought the first forty-five minutes or so of the movie were good. This portion of the film is actually more of a family drama as we're really given a lot of character development as we see the mother struggling with the death of her husband but we also see her struggle being a single mother and having to deal with an unhealthy child. I thought this stuff was actually well-written and handled extremely well by director Jennifer Kent. I thought she also managed to really show the struggles of this movie and the relationship between the two really did seem 100% real and never forced or faked. Even the relationship with the family members and outsiders came across very believable. The performances by both Davis and Wiseman were extremely good with Davis really shining as the mother who slowly begins to lose her mind.
Obviously, on a technical level, the film is quite effective so the level of your entertainment will be on whether or not it scares you. While watching the movie I could see why some would find it disturbing or downright frightening but I thought there were just too many things here that had been done in previous, much better movies. These include elements of THE EXORCIST (mom dealing with ill child), THE SHINING (one sequence really "borrows" from the Kubrick) film and even Mario Bava's SHOCK. THE BABADOCK is a decent movie but considering I went in expecting scares, it's a major disappointment in the end.