The reason that so many people (critics and non-critics alike) are responding to and being willingly scared to death by THE BABADOOK, the feature debut from writer-director Jennifer Kent, is because the film is secretly a family drama first and a horror film... well, tied for first. My point is that so many modern horror films fail miserably at generating any lasting response because the people that make them don't bother investing an iota of heart into their characters. And if the people that create these characters don't care about them, why should we? We're not looking for deep background and fully realized histories of each and every player, but we would truly feel like we're invested in their fates if you make them something other than hapless victims to the creature or evil force that you inevitably spent way more time creating than your human characters.
What makes the Australian-made THE BABADOOK even more fascinating is that its two central characters (practically the film's only characters) are single mother Amelia (Essie Davis) and her six-year-old son, Samuel (newcomer Noah Wiseman), who are living alone in a dreary house left all the more vacant by the sudden, violent death of her husband. Amelia's lasting depression is made all the more unbearable by Samuel active imagination at home and school, where he frequently gets into trouble for bringing homemade weapons to class.
The grey-walled, dimly lit home is a reflection of the mood of its occupants, or perhaps its the other way around. But things come to a head one night when Amelia reads her son a newly discovered children's pop-up book called “The Babadook,” a bogeyman story about an invading creature that comes knocking, seeking unsuspecting children. And before long, Samuel starts seeing signs that the real Babadook has come into his emotionally vulnerable life and home. For a time, director Kent allows us to consider the possibility that the Babadook is something that Sam only sees in his mind, but that doesn't last long. And before long, the mother-son team are fighting off whatever awful misdeeds this creature has in store for them.
In addition to the fine work from Kent, Essie Davis is the real find in this film (at least to American audiences; she's a fairly established, celebrated stage actress Down Under). She allows us to feel the very real, believable moments when parents find it difficult—even impossible—to love their children, especially ones who had frequent paranoid visions of monsters coming to kill them even before a real one actually was. The film exists both as an updated, realistic fairy tale and a skillfully crafted modern scare story, with Kent hitting every last tension-filled rhythm with perfection. But she also does an exceptional job capturing a certain look that borrows heavily from German Expressionism and the transformational makeup work of Lon Chaney. THE BABADOOK is all about atmosphere and performance, and not about blood and guts and loud music crashes that signify nothing.
And Kent isn't intent on over-explaining exactly what or who the Babadook is. He appears when Amelia seems to be at the height of her sorrow and frustration, so the possibility that this monster has sprung from her emotional disruption exists. Or was it sent to remind her that she must love and protect her child, even when he seems intolerable? Or could it be all of these things, or none of them? Wow, it's so refreshing not to have everything spelled out for us, and actually allow us to use our brains to contemplate the bigger questions. THE BABADOOK is not just the scariest horror film I've seen this year, but it's the best because it allows us to embrace these soulful characters in a way that we so rarely get a chance to in horror. The acting and production design serve to enhance Kent's worthy script, and you should all make the most valiant of efforts to find see it.
