The horror genre gets a chilling redo with the critically acclaimed Australian film, The Babadook. Taking its cues from the 1950s and 1960s ghost stories that slyly suggested horror rather than threw it in your face, it also marks the feature directorial debut of Jennifer Kent. Much has been made that The Babadook represents a far different sensibility given that it is a film written and directed by a woman.
The film is presented from the viewpoint of its lead character, Amelia (Essie Davis), a woman with multiple issues and an overwhelming stress level. She parents a six-year-old terror, Samuel (Noah Wiseman, in one of the most memorable child acting performances in recent memory). Samuel harbors a streak of aggressiveness that can quickly morph into violence. He has a penchant for constructing rudimentary homemade weaponry, or throwing his cousin out of a treehouse. Yet, virtually the next moment, he also can be sweet and endearingly needy. At the heart of his anxiety is what he perceives as the very real presence of a pernicious children’s pop-up book character. He can’t keep talking about The Babadook, a snaggletoothed monster whose very mention causes his mother at first amusement, but quickly annoyance. By the time she throws the book away things have escalated to a point where her natural single-mom fragility has strengthened into a frazzled frenzy. Then when the book eerily reappears one day, things really begin to go haywire.
Essie Davis astutely captures the complexity of a mom who also must live with the memory of a deceased husband who died driving her to the hospital while in labor with Samuel. Survival guilt and Samuel’s frustrations concerning a dad he never knew but must be measured against, are the least of Amelia’s worries. Her natural resentment toward Samuel is played out with great care and detail. As the movie begins to blur the supernatural and the psychological we watch Amelia change into somewhat of a monster herself. Yet she remains one in control, the character’s verisimilitude never in doubt however far off normalcy she is forced to stray. The Babadook is that rarity: a film that will scare the hell out of you yet make you think. One can’t wait for Kent’s next project.