The Babadook

As you might expect from some­thing so firm­ly ensconced in the trap­pings of hor­ror, The Babadook is riv­en with grief. Amelia (Essie Davies, in a fiery, trans­for­ma­tive per­for­mance) is a sin­gle par­ent com­ing to terms with the death of her hus­band Oskar fol­low­ing a trag­ic car acci­dent. She blames her­self, hav­ing been at Oskar’s side at the time, en route to the local hos­pi­tal in order to give birth to their son, Samuel.

When the film picks up their sto­ry, Samuel is six years old and a bit of a mis­cre­ant. An ama­teur con­juror, he warns his agnos­tic moth­er about a sin­is­ter and demon­ic man­i­fes­ta­tion that haunts his dreams and skulks around in the shad­ows. Mean­while, a dis­turb­ing pop-up book called Mis­ter Babadook has mys­te­ri­ous­ly tak­en res­i­dence on the shelf in Samuel’s bed­room, fore­shad­ow­ing ter­ri­fy­ing events that will change both of their lives forever.

The epony­mous mon­ster at the heart of direc­tor Jen­nifer Kent’s effec­tive and ulti­mate­ly pro­found crea­ture fea­ture is no wee, tim­o­rous beast­ie; it’s a pris­tine and unnat­ur­al pres­ence that lives in the walls, hides in the base­ment and lingers in the dark­est recess of a vast wood­en clos­et. Noth­ing is safe from this ghast­ly bog­gart, not even the dog. At least, that’s what this tal­ent­ed new Aus­tralian writer/​director would have us believe. Frankly, Kent’s dis­tinct­ly creepy debut is a lit­tle too inter­est­ed in the duplic­i­ty and trick­ery of magi­cians to be tak­en entire­ly at face value.

Ambi­gu­i­ty fuels the ter­ror, and The Babadook is all the bet­ter — and scari­er — for it. How admirable for a movie like this to com­plete­ly side­step easy answers and tidy res­o­lu­tions. Effec­tive, too. Kent’s grim fan­dan­go takes its cues not from more recent (and banal) West­ern chillers like The Con­jur­ing or the dry ice pageant Insid­i­ous, but from the nos­tal­gic pri­mal­ism of direc­tors like Hideo Naka­ta and Takashi Shimizu. The film eschews pedes­tri­an shocks in favour of slow-burn dread before final­ly crank­ing every­thing up for a wit­ty and unex­pect­ed finale.