REVIEW: The Babadook

"If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of The Babadook."
I certainly hope not, seeing as how this horror film from Australia is positively brilliant. Directed by Jennifer Kent and based on her 2005 short film, MONSTER, The Babadook became the critically-acclaimed darling of this past year's Sundance Film Festival. Lucky for us lowly commoners, it's now available in certain super-special theaters and on multiple video-streaming services.

The plot is your standard ghost-type story; a struggling single mother and widow (portrayed by Essie Davis, who gives a performance comparable to that of Nicholson in The Shining) and her slightly disturbed son (Noah Wiseman, playing a kid in a horror movie that I actually don't want to smack) encounter the world's scariest pop-up book and must deal with the terrible entity that is unleashed upon their home.

Make no mistake, this is not a horror movie in the same realm as Freddy vs Jason or Paranormal Activity, where you pop some popcorn and yell at characters who are drinking and sexing themselves into an early, jump-scare induced grave. The Babadook is more in the same category as something like Alien or The Shining, where the emphasis is placed on building suspense and immersing the audience in the terrifying events taking place on screen. There are no multi-billion dollar special effects on display here; Mister Babadook looks and moves like a misplaced extra from The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. And that's assuming he's even on screen; the titular monster only has, at the very most, a few minutes of screentime throughout the entire thing. But like the xenomorph in Alien or the shark in Jaws, this scarcity makes his few appearances all the more effective. 

And just as in Alien and Jaws, the real star of the movie is not the creature, but the lead actors. Essie Davis gives one of the best horror performances I've ever seen. Her on-screen relationship with Noah Wiseman delves into some truly uncomfortable territory and helps cement this film as an instant horror classic. In the film, she plays Amelia, a nursing home orderly who never quite moved on from her husband's death. As the story goes on, she must face her own demons while conversely dealing with her son, Samuel (Wiseman). Samuel suffers from a constant fear of monsters, even going so far as to construct homebrew weaponry to ward off the horrible things he fears lurk under his bed and in his closet. His father was killed in a car accident while driving a pregnant Amelia to the hospital; this gives rise to a veritable Ouroboros of mental anguish. Amelia is just as responsible for her son's problems as Samuel is for his mother's. By the end of the movie, the underlying theme is pretty obvious, but there's plenty of tiny moments scattered throughout that will illicit several "OH MY GOD, WAITAMINUTE"s on repeat viewings.

The Babadook is a horror fan's horror movie; it's subtle and chilling, showcasing some truly stunning performances. It's the type of movie that will leave you thinking about it for hours after you've seen it, then make you wet yourself when you need to trek down a dark hallway to get to the bathroom in the middle of the night.