Essie Davis has been raising her 6 year-old son Noah Wiseman since a tragic car accident took her husband’s life on the day the boy was born. She clearly hasn’t quite recovered from the grief, and not making matters easier is the volatile behaviour of young Wiseman, who doesn’t appear to play well with others. One day he gives her a book he found, to read him at bedtime. As she reads it, she realises it is anything but appropriate for children, as it concerns a creature lurking in the shadows that wants to kill. Wiseman is terrified, Davis gets rid of the book and that’s the end of that, she hopes. It’s not the end…boy is it ever not. Noises, shadows, and sheer terror ensue.
A huge surprise from writer-director Jennifer Kent, this 2014 psychological horror-drama is the most legit scary horror film I’ve seen in at least a decade. Whether that’s a big call or not, I suppose depends on how scary you find horror films of the last decade. I’m sure I’ll be accused of favouritism given it’s an Aussie film, but let me assure you, I’m pretty harsh on most films from my country. No, this is just that freaking good.
Kent starts us off with a deliberately aggravating, intensely unnerving opener. There’s a deliberately irritating use of sound, meant to keep you on edge. There’s something uncomfortably claustrophobic about this mother-son circumstance. Noah Wiseman is terrific as young Samuel, a character who will drive you up the wall just as it does his mother, played by Essie Davis. Some found they hated Wiseman’s character, but it’s pretty obvious that this kid is clearly troubled, and his home life has recently changed on him, not something that is easy for a young fella to deal with. At such a young age, Wiseman shows great maturity in being able to play such a troubled young boy. He’s believably disturbed…and disturbing. Essie Davis is believably wearied by and worried by her son. Moreover, she sells every transition of her character effortlessly and seamlessly. There’s one act of cruelty in particular that had me shouting an shocked obscenity at the television, I was so stunned and horrified. This is one of those rare films that manages to be fantastical and realistic in the same film, without it seeming like two films strung together. Is the Babadook real? Or is Davis losing her grip on reality? Hell, did she (a former writer) create the book herself, perhaps?
The film may have fairly familiar characters and storyline, but it makes up for that with sheer terror. The title book is seriously the most Satanically-derived monstrosity I’ve come across. It is the product of a sick, sick mind. Seriously, it’s the Pop-Up Book of Evil. It’s not just the book that I found unsettling, however. We get the creepiest and most disturbing phone call since the original “Black Christmas”, and when the title creature speaks…it’s easily the most horrific and unsettling sound I’ve heard since the spaceships in Spielberg’s underrated and (for me at least) terrifying “War of the Worlds”. I’m not kidding, it nearly made me lose my bearings. I always find sound FX scarier when they’re familiar, but not immediately identifiable. It’s a fantastic-looking horror film, and there’s no doubt that Kent and her cinematographer have seen “Nosferatu”. It’s a wonderfully gloomy, doom-y, shadowy-looking film that was right up my Gothic/German Expressionist/Hammer horror alley. The film definitely wears its genre references on its sleeve, but as much as the finale has elements of “The Haunting”, “Repulsion”, and “Poltergeist”, it still forges its own identity. I wish it ran at a slightly quicker pace, but that’s it for flaws as far as I’m concerned.
OVERALL SUMMARY
A rare horror film that is actually genuinely scary, instead of making you jump (those are shocks, not ‘scares’ and they are lame), and makes an attempt at also grounding itself in a reality you can at least buy into for 90 minutes or so. A critically-acclaimed horror film that actually lived up to the hype for me, and maybe even exceeded it.
