The Babadook Review

Director: Jennifer Kent

Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman

Certificate: 15

Run Time: 94 minutes

Synopsis: One evening a young mother (Davis) and her son (Wiseman) find a mysterious children’s book, ‘Mister Babadook”. Once read their world starts to get very strange; is Mister Babadook more than a work of fiction?

Motherhood is never easy, especially when your husband dies taking you to the delivery room. This sorry fate is the burden that single mother Amelia is living with. Six years on and she is still struggling to process the traumatic event, and her son Samuel has become quite the handful. Fixated on the idea of monsters -a phase most children normally grow out of – Samuel sees them everywhere and fears for the life of his mother. His anxiety leads to him refusing to sleep, which in turn means that mum can’t sleep either. Samuel is also extremely clingy and needy; Wiseman spends a big portion of the film shrieking for his mother’s attention, for which his mother is too broken and exhausted to give. THE BABADOOK highlights the true plight of the frazzled parent, in particular showcasing the hardships that single parents face as the try to look after their child, and hold down a job and source of income.

When the pair discover a mysterious story book called Mister Babadook everything gets worse. Samuel is convinced that the fictional creature is real and starts preparing an arsenal to stop him. At first Amelia doesn’t believe him, but then things start happening that can’t be explained. The introduction of Babadook is built up right from the very start, and by the time he actually materialises the tension that has been created in ridiculously intense. Worse still, you never get to fully see the Babadook, just glimpses which makes him all the more sinister.

The lynchpin of BABADOOK is the performance of leading lady Essie Davis. Her portrayal of the down-beaten Amelia is so spot on you will walk out of the auditorium believing that she could be real, generating discussions with those around you as to what you would do in her circumstances. Her softly defeated performance is reminiscent of a young Jessica Lange, Davis even has a bit of the older actress about her in the looks department too. Her Amelia elicits empathy from the audience, so much so that at several points you will be begging for The Babadook to take Samuel away purely so the poor woman can get some rest. Which leads us onto Wiseman, at only seven he has also created a character that feels true to life. Samuel is an odd child, a product of his circumstances who, even at his tender age, has vowed to keep his mother safe no matter what.

The sound design on this film is truly terrifying. It travels the line between silent and sinister in a truly unsettling way; one noise coupled with its strange camerawork towards the climax of the story actually induced the hairs on my neck to stand up. The art design of the house in which most of the story takes place is also fantastic. Money for this portion of the film was raised via Kickstarter and proves that investing into films on this forum can lead to some exceptional results. A special mention should also go to the creepy Mister Babadook book which is sure to become an iconic horror film prop alongside Freddy’s glove, Jason’s mask and the Cenobite’s Puzzle Box.

Although (towards to end) the film stumbles a little too much into HOME ALONE territory, on the whole BABADOOK is spectacular. THE BABADOOK sidesteps the usual conventions of a haunted house movie and takes the viewer down a road less frequently travelled. Female director Jennifer Kent, who also wrote the screenplay, has managed to create an incredible, credible, thinking man’s ghost story. This is the only horror film to see this Halloween season, though I’ve no doubt the film will be around for years. After all, you can’t get rid of The Babadook.

THE BABADOOK is in cinemas everywhere now.