The Babadook (2014)

Film: The Babadook (2014)
Stars: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Hayley McElhinney, Barbara West
Director: Jennifer Kent
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 4/5 stars

I have to admit, first-off, that I'm a bit obsessed with this quality horror film movement happening in theaters the past few years.  After years of slashers without substance you have movies like The Conjuring, Let the Right One In, and my personal favorite Cabin in the Woods that are totally adding substance and occasionally even a damn metaphor into the mix, and I couldn't be happier.  Horror films are always more meaningful and scary when they have something scary to sink into as a result of the movie, and this is surely the case with the cleverly-told Babadook.

(Spoilers Ahead, and this is a film that's filled with them, so bookmark here, see the excellent movie, and come back to discuss) The film is about a woman named Amelia (Davis) who is raising a troubled son named Sam (Wiseman).  Amelia's husband has been dead for months, and neither of them are handling it particularly well, with Sam behaving like a truly horrible child, frequently prone to lying and tantrums, while his mother is overly indulgent, and clearly suffering from horrible sleep deprivation.  The film takes a turn into the world of horror when Amelia reads Sam a story about Mister Babadook, who is a monster who tortures all of those who are aware of him.  Sam fully believes in the creature, but Amelia resists until the monster starts to drive her mad and begins tormenting her with bumps-in-the-night and allusions to her madness and insinuating she will eventually kill her son.  The film has a climactic showdown with the creature, where Amelia, after nearly killing Sam in madness, eventually subdues the Babadook and keeps him at bay in the cellar.

The film works both as a pretty opaque metaphor for grief as well as a straight-up horror film.  The movie clearly wants the creature to be a metaphor for grief, and Jennifer Kent's screenplay mirrors The Yellow Wallpaper, the classic Charlotte Perkins Gilman short story about a woman's struggle with depression and madness.  This works really well, and doesn't feel particularly heavy-handed even when  such metaphors in horror films oftentimes feel more like school lessons than creepy entertainment.

The more interesting aspect of the film to me, however, was that the movie really examines something that we are loathe to discuss in modern society: the mother who hates her child.  Sam is presented, especially at the beginning of the film, as a child that is impossible to love.  He's annoying, he's cloying, he's constantly disappointing.  As an audience we are normally trained to have sympathy for him-after all, he's just lost his father and is dealing with it as best he can with a mother who clearly doesn't know how to handle a trouble child.  However, the further we get into the film we see that he's in fact a child really difficult to love, and in our heart-of-hearts we wonder how much we could take in such a situation.  Essie Davis does a marvelous job (someone please give her more leading parts please) by never making her character into a saint or a gorgon, giving that creepy undertone of "being stuck in an impossible situation."  In many ways this recalls some of the nastiest episodes of The Twilight Zone-what do you do when you have a child that you hate?  The film doesn't have the guts to continue this line of thinking, perhaps because it was too uncomfortable that it would never get past even in an independent studio executive, but Kent has the question positioned prominently enough that her message is clearly pushed across.  You'll squirm in your seat as you realize you've come to hate a little boy.

The film also works, though, as a straight horror film-the Babadook is nasty, frequently striking in the daytime (messing with the psychology of horror films which usually give that as a calm for the viewers), being relentless and seemingly unbeatable, and having no motive.  He's just a creature that brings torment and death, and working in the world of pop-up books, it's a wonderfully-infused throwback to nasty childhood nightmares.  Really, while the film isn't quite perfect (I think that the hated-son angle could have been pushed harder or the handsome dead husband angle brought forward a little sooner), this is really a great film and another wonderful installation into the recent run of quality horror fare.

What did you think of The Babadook?  Are you with me thinking this is another high-water moment for the horror genre or did you get lost in the metaphors?  Why hasn't Essie Davis been headlining films  for years?  And who wants that pop-up book on their shelves?  Share in the comments!