The Babadook Review (2014) Worth Watching?

A mother and her son face a monster from a story book that may just be too real to comprehend.

The Babadook was directed by Jennifer Kent (who also directed The Nightingale) and stars Essie Davis (from Sweeney Todd and Isolation), Noah Wiseman and Hayley Mcelhinney (from Redd Inc.).

If it's in a word. Or it's in a look. You can't get rid of ... The Babadook

Everyone has dealt with grief and mourning at some point in their life. The passing of a loved one is inevitable and it’s a harsh truth that one day someone close to you will unfortunately pass away. How do you deal with it? The grief is something that will never go away, like a metaphorical skeleton in your closet. It’s always going to be there, you can open the closet and look in but it’s important to learn to live with it. “The Babadook” takes a look at the mourning process and shows what can hurt or hinder your life if you don’t accept moving on and how it can affect your friends, family and life. Director Jennifer Kent does a great job of showing Amelia’s pain and depression throughout the film. A heartbreaking aspect of the film is the withdrawn emotion and spite Amelia has for her son Samuel, almost like she's holding Samuel accountable for the death of her husband. The Babadook monster is Amelia’s depression, grief, mourning and frustration in a supernatural form.

A topic that’s commonly brought up when talking about “The Babadook” is that people shouldn’t have kids because of Samuel’s behaviour throughout the whole movie. The criticism is a little extreme given that Samuel is a young kid who is facing an unprecedented horror as well as the mental/emotional demise of his mother Amelia. It can be seen that Samuel truly loves his mother and wants to protect her. As the Babadook becomes stronger, Samuel becomes more frantic.

Worth Watching?

Essie Davis turns in a powerhouse performance as Amelia and carries the film almost single handedly even without the excellent direction from Jennifer Kent. The creature design of the Babadook is almost like a love letter to the early 1900s German expressionism horror (Cabinet of Dr Caligari, Nosferatu etc.). “The Babadook” is a creepy, unsettling film and definitely for those who want to see more emotional depth in a horror film. Absolutely worth checking out!

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