NOTE: This is a reprint of my review from the Virginia Film Festival. The Babadook opens in theaters this Friday, November 28th.
Being a mother is hard enough; being a widow with an unruly child is downright torturous. In Jennifer Kent's thrilling and wryly comical horror The Babadook, the pain of motherhood is manifest in the form of a demonic creature sprung forth from a child's storybook. Set in a small Australian suburb, over-burdened mother and care worker Amelia (Essie Davis) is struggling to balance work with watching over her troubled 6-year-old son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Born on the same day his father was killed in an accident, Samuel has never celebrated a birthday at the right time, just one of many ways his mother tries to distance herself from the terrible memory.
Already in distress, Amelia's life gets worse when the disturbed and distressed child begins acting out over a monster he believes lives in his room. Known as The Babadook, this seemingly imaginary creature has the boy arming himself with weapons to fight back, leading to understandable problems at school. When he gets kicked out, the stressed-out Amelia begins to spiral further, dismissing her son's cries about the Babadook. But when a mysterious book named after the creature shows up on the bookshelf, and she makes the mistake of reading from it, the horrifying events it foretells spook her into a state of constant paranoia.
An assured, Polanski-esque debut by Kent, The Babadook explores the anxieties of single parenthood and the inability to overcome tremendous grief. The tension she's able to build from this dark fairy tale escalates at a feverish pace, while the ambiguous nature of it keeps us on our toes. Is the Babadook really a supernatural presence to be feared? Or is there something else going on that Amelia, and perhaps even Samuel, are unwilling or unable to accept? The Babadook himself isn't especially terrifying, in fact Kent has a sense of humor about many of his dastardly appearances, but that only serves to make him all the more terrifying. The real horror comes from watching the eroding psyche of Amelia and Samuel, who we come to empathize with, and how the Babadook corrodes what had been a nurturing mother/son bond. When the winking, wry tone fades the film loses much of its steam but at no point does Kent fall back on pedestrian shocks. Save those for the low-budget "found footage" flicks that clutter up multiplexes on opening weekend. Conjuring up frights by putting truly sympathetic characters through the psychological wringer, The Babadook is one of the best the genre has to offer and Kent a fresh voice to keep an ear out for.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5
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