Movie trailer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVxOrUjX-bc
Official website:
Www.discoverthebabadook.com
Dir: Jennifer Kent. Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Tiffany Lyndall-Knight, Benjamin Winspear, Carmel Johnson. 15 cert, 95 min.
UK release date: October 24th 2014
The Babadook is an old-fashioned psychological horror movie, with modern technology largely shut out, thus creating a claustrophobic, isolated environment where a bereaved mother and her young son attempt to come to terms with the loss of her husband and his father.
It is a movie that could have been set in 1950, as the ubiquitous surveillance devices stuck to the side of temples are missing and Internet/social media is rejected early on. The mother declares it bad for the child, and that’s the first and last we hear of it. What we are left with is a very quiet house, a busy uncaring world, and a mother and child slowly going insane through lack of connectivity, empathy and the dominance of unresolved grief in their lives.
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| Isolation and grief |
The Babadook itself is a creature that feeds on the isolation, grief and unresolved trauma that dominates the family’s life. The mother, rummaging around her old book shelves to find a new bedtime story for her little boy finds a mysterious book titled, ‘Mr Babadook.’ She reads it to him, slowly discovering that this is no ordinary bedtime story book. She stops reading before the end, but it’s too late. The creature has been given a doorway. He’s in, and for the rest of the movie he makes their lives a living Hell. All is explained, in a subtle way, at the end of the movie, it makes sense, and you leave the cinema feeling satisfied.
This is one of those movies that literally screams quality from the very beginning. It’s shot beautifully, with painstaking attention to detail, but it’s not forced, pretentious and trying to be something that it’s not. Have you ever experienced one of those up their own backsides Hollywood movies that are obvious Oscar bait for some middle-aged big name actor? I have, and they are blooding irritating beyond belief. This isn’t one of those movies. It looks great, sounds great, is unsettling, creepy and scary and it has huge emotional resonance as well.
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| Terrifying |
The acting is exceptional. A bad child actor would have ruined the movie, but the seven year-old kid (Noah Wieseman) in this movie is amazingly good. Surprisingly good really, in that he comes across like a normal, slightly disturbed child. He’s not a Hollywood kid; he’s just a kid. And his mother, she is amazing. The range of emotions she goes through, pouring out onto the screen the torments of her soul, it really is an outstanding performance. I usually ignore the Oscars, but if ever an actress deserves an Oscar, it’s Essie Davis for her performance in this movie.
This would be an easy 10/10 movie for me, if not for the one issue I referenced in my opening couple of paragraphs. I understand why it distances itself from the contemporary issues that are destroying the sense of freedom and democracy in the west. It made the choice to isolate the small family, thus itensifying the sense of isolation and claustrophobia. That choice made the movie what it was, but why not have a couple of nods to what is going on in the world today? Perhaps it wasn’t possible? Perhaps the state surveillance issues of today had to be ignored to make the movie as effective as it was? That’s probably true, but even so, to get a perfect score from this reviewer you have to give me some acknowledgement that you are aware, and engaging with the issues that are dominating our times. It was a great movie, but it didn’t really say anything about the world as it is today.
Apart from that one issue, the movie is a world removed from what I usually experience at the cinema. Genuinely unsettling, emotionally engaging, beautifully shot, with tremendous use of sound and with outstanding performances from the two leads. The Babadook is a superior piece of cinema and the best horror movie since that I’ve seen since ‘Let the Right One In’ in 2008. If you’re going to the cinema any time soon, this is the movie that you’ll want to see.
Rating: 9/10
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