Movie review: The Babadook- Terrifyingly real

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.

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.

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

Horror movie review: The Woman in Black- Decent movie, but it’s got Harry Potter in it

Released: February 2012
Website: http://www.hammerfilms.com/ourwork/3/the-woman-in-black

Here’s another movie that I kept bumping into in the supermarket at a bargain price, but waited to see on television because yes, I’m a cheap git when it comes to watching movies. The simple truth of the matter is that most movies these days aren’t even worth a few quid. They’re mostly stooooopid crap with special effects, re-makes and franchise money-makers that aren’t worth my time or money.

The Woman in Black is a movie that people will see for two reasons, the first (and main reason) is because Daniel ‘Harry Potter’ Radcliffe is in it. The second reason is that it’s made under the ‘Hammer Horror’ banner, and for old horror buffs people like myself that still means something.

I didn’t pay for this movie because I’m not really that enamoured with Daniel Radcliffe as an actor. I’ve seen him do a couple of things, including the child’s book, and I’ve never been that impressed. To me he is the perfect embodiment of masculinity in the UK post 2001. A wimpy, personality free blank slate of a child-man who looks like he’s waiting for a bus, has lost his iphone, and thus doesn’t know what to do with himself. He’s one of those guys who you assume is gay, because everything about him screams politically correct and soft. Is he actually gay? He’s a feminist liberal atheist Richard Dawkins fan, so frankly, he might as well be. I’m sure if he’s not fashionably gay then he feels terribly guilty about it.

Onto the actual movie then, this is supposed to be a review after all and not a rant about the sorry state of masculinity in the UK today.  It looks absolutely gorgeous, and everything about it screams old-fashioned Hammer horror. The plot is centred on a glorious gothic haunted mansion, set right in the middle of a moor. The house (which is the star of the show) is haunted by a BOO, oh no I’ve crapped my pants ghost who is making the local children kill themselves because she’s upset about the death of her son.  Radcliffe is playing a Jonathan Harker in Dracula type character, sent there on business, but soon finding himself at the centre of spooky proceedings.

There was one moment in the movie that really made me jump out of my skin and for that one reason alone I’m knocking out this review. The plot was predictable, even right up to the end with a twist that didn’t exactly surprise anybody, well except for the character that it happened to. The supporting cast was pretty decent, and far better than Radcliffe himself, the sullen and apathetic elephant in the middle of the movie, distracting from what was an atmospheric and effective old-school horror movie, that offers a couple of decent scares for particularly jumpy audiences.

Oh God, Radcliffe was bad in this one. There he stood, an awkward boy-man, completely unconvincing in his role of a recently bereaved widower worried about his now motherless young son. He carried the same expression of myopic indifference and blank faced mild discomfort throughout the entire movie. Was he drunk? Was he stoned? Perhaps he’s just not very good at portraying adult characters? He was awful in this. Combining a complete lack of physicality with an unnerving ability to make me not give a crap about anything that happened to him. He was a boy dressed up as a man, awkwardly stuck in the middle of a decent horror movie, giving absolutely nothing to it, whilst a cast of far more interesting co-stars did their best to inject some personality into proceedings.

After seeing Radcliffe in this, a couple of Harry Potter movies and some pile of junk on television about a doctor, or something, I’ll be going out of my way to avoid anything that he’s in, in the future.

Perhaps his Harry Potter wealth is enough, and he’ll retire from movie acting early and spend his time reading books about a Godless universe, and feeling guilty about the feminist liberal issues that are Rockefeller designed to turn grown men into jelly-fish? Or he could work in the theatre and learn how to act? I hear he’s doing that, so perhaps he’s aware of his shortcomings and is trying to improve himself? If so, then I applaud his efforts. I don’t hate the bloke. I’m just not a fan. That’s all. I want him to read and to learn, and to evolve. I used to think that Richard Dawkins had some wisdom as well, but I kept reading, and I changed my mind about those childish ideas. Hopefully Radcliffe will do the same. Dawkins is a trap, and lots of young people fall into it.

This was a good movie, containing one big crap my pants moment that forced me to write this review, but my initial reservations about the casting of Radcliffe as the main protagonist were pretty much spot on. The Woman in Black might be a Hammer horror movie, but its got Harry bloody Potter in it, and although not completely sinking the movie, he does very little to enhance it, other than getting some Harry Potter fans to spend their parent’s money on it. I hear they’re making this into a franchise. Let’s hope Radcliffe has no involvement in it, because he almost ruined this movie for me. With his expressionless blank face it’s amazing to me that he’s an actor at all. Then again, a lot of things are surprising to me now. In the land of the mediocre, the most mediocre of them all is King.
Rating: 6/10