The Babadook is a small indie horror movie from Australia that’s in limited theatrical release right now and on iTunes rental (just in time for… Thanksgiving!). This film is one of the most unsettling movies I’ve seen in some time. It understands good horror means effective moods, not cheap jump scares, and it creates it smartly. Very few horror movies can reach that place where it gives me literal chills up and down my body… and puts me on edge. I’ve seen too many horror movies and their cheap tricks… this one is better that those.
The premise is as basic and overdone as possible – a single mother has a son who think the boogeyman is under his bed, in his closet, or wherever… and maybe he is. In the form of Mr. Babadook – a dark figure with a top-hat and lethal fingers – the specter appears to be haunting the already emotionally disturbed 6 year old. This is an old story and the movie knows it – it uses it’s familiarity to tell a story that’s more than just the thing that goes bump in the night.
The movie is just as much a waking nightmare of depression and possible madness. The actress who plays the mother is convincingly sleep-deprived (due to her son and her own depression over the loss of her husband) and might just be going slightly mad. Or maybe it’s Mr. Babadook… or maybe this movie has no spooks at all and it’s just a parable of an overstretched, overworked, emotionally overwrought mother. A convincing argument could be made for the later through large swaths of the film.
I’d almost say this is one of the best films of the year if it had been shorter and didn’t spend quite so much time playing with the ideas of sleep and whether or not things are happening or not. Similar to the “almost good” movie Oculus from earlier this year, at a certain point in this movie, you can’t trust what’s real and what’s not to the point it starts to lose me. Up until that point – and a little after things settle back down – this movie is a really good, really creepy film. And it’s quite possible my mental block on “is it real or is it not” would not affect you at all and this would remain (hopefully) one of the creepier movies you’ve seen.
It’s certain, in my book, still the best horror movie of the year…. which is not a high bar, unfortunately. But it’s brushes next to the best movies of the year full stop.
Score: 87