The Babadook (2014) Review

Man, it's been a while, hasn't it? I've been out of commission for some time and that's not good. I felt like writing a review today, so let's get into it with one of the most confusing movies of 2014 (at least for me), The Babadook.

MANY SPOILERS AWAIT. TURN BACK NOW.

I was really excited for this movie when I heard about it. It was praised by critics and I had heard that it was a breath of fresh air to the modern horror genre; no cheap jump scares, no awfully written characters, and a real plot. I was stoked! 

For the most part, this movie is exactly what most critics say it is: a near perfect horror film. The first two thirds of this movie are incredible and I was terrified of it. It's hard to make a movie that actually scares me; like really scares me. I had trouble sleeping after watching this movie. It was scary enough to revert me back to a child-like state of hiding and whimpering under the covers. And then the last third of the movie comes and screws it all up. How? Well, I'll explain that a little later. Let's start with the plot.

A single mother is having a hard time keeping her rowdy 6-year-old son under control. No matter what she does, he always seems to get himself into trouble and he refuses to obey her at all. He's constantly making dangerous makeshift weaponry to fight against pretend monsters. It's especially hard for the mother because her husband and father of the son was killed in a car crash while he was on the way to the hospital when she was giving birth. So this single mother has to live her life constantly juggling the responsibility of caring for her out of control son and the grief of losing her husband. 

Those Aussies sure know how to bring the feels.

Anyway, one day, the mother finds a strange childrens book on her porch. The book is called The Babadook (bonus points for proper MLA format, underlining a book title, suck it English professor) and she decides that instead of throwing this strange item that she's never seen before away like any reasonable person would do, she's gonna take the book inside and read it to her son. At first it seems pretty normal, talking about an invisible friend called The Babadook that is friendly towards kids and plays with them, making his presence known by making three knocks. Then, it gets a little more serious, saying that if you find The Babadook, it'll kill you and make you never sleep again. 

Still, not the worst childrens horror book I've ever seen

Obviously, this scares the everloving piss out of the kid and the mother proceeds to throw the book out. Over the course of the next week or so, the child constantly talks about The Babadook and how it's gonna get him. This is accompanied by creepy knocking noises in the house, hallucinations, and a general fear of what's gonna happen next by the mother. The mother always tells the son that it's just a book and nothing's gonna happen, but then afterwards, something happens like her seeing the monster from the book or seeing a hallucination of her dead husband and becoming happy again, only to get scared again when that hallucination turns into the monster. Spooky stuff. By the way, through the whole movie, we're told of The Babadook, this incredibly scary creature that comes into your house and kills you. So what does this terrifying monster look like? 

The little kid from The Grudge all grown up in a top hat with Wolverine claws....

Anyway, the mother then proceeds to burn the book, which she thinks will stop all this madness. It doesn't. The book rematerializes itself and adds another page, which says that it's angry now and it's gonna get revenge for the mother trying to get rid of it. Here's where the movie, which was near perfect up to this point, takes a turn for the absolute worst. Let's take a little quiz: which type of horror movie do I hate the most? If your answer was generic demon possession movie, the congratulations, a winner is you! That's right folks, the last third of this movie is a generic demon possession movie! The Babadook makes its way into the mother's body and possesses her, making her do awful things like trying to kill her son and actually killing their pet dog :'(

This climax is just the son running away from the possessed mother until the Babadook decides to let her go and take it's true form: some giant dragon thing maybe? You can't tell because it's just a silhouette, but it's definitely big and kind of looks like a dragon. The mother and son cower in the corner as the dragon shadow moves towards them, making stock dragon roaring sound effects in the process. Then the mother screams at it to get away from them and......it does. That's it. That's the dramatic confrontation. The dragon shadow retreats to the basement and the mother locks it up down there. The epilogue shows that instead of trying to kill it, the mother is keeping the shadow dragon locked up in the basement for some reason. It's kinda dumb.

We sure showed him! ....I guess

That's the movie. The Babadook is overall, a terrific horror film. Well shot, well acted, great plot, great atmosphere, and then it all goes to crap once the mother gets possessed. I have never in my life seen a film go from good to bad so quickly. That being said, the last third of the film isn't worst thing I've ever seen, it's just incredibly disappointing. I know it's supposed to be some deep symbolism about how the monster is an embodiment of the mother's grief for her dead husband and the guilt of not being able to control her child and her keeping it in the basement is symbolic of her finally learning to live with those emotions and blah blah blah artsy fartsy crap. It's just a bad way to end your film that was amazing from the start. 

The Babadook is an Australian made film and as such, all the actors have Australian accents. However, that isn't a bother because of how incredibly well-acted this movie is. Seriously, the main actress gives an Oscar-worthy performance here. It's really a sight to behold. Plus, the child actor, while annoying sometimes, is one of the best child actors I've ever seen. He really knows how to bring a scene together. On top of the amazing acting, the direction of this movie is off the charts. The scary scenes stick with you because they're executed so well with the lighting and the music and it's all so good. Even the scenes that aren't supposed to be scary are well-shot. 

All in all, The Babadook was a really good horror flick that breathed new life into the modern horror genre for me. It's just a shame that the climax was as disappointing as it was. That being said, the climax doesn't ruin the entire movie; it's just a major hiccup in an otherwise spectacular film. Don't let me telling you that it was disappointing keep you from checking this movie out, because it's definitely a good movie and I highly recommend it. I give The Babadook 9 spooky shadow dragons out of 10. Definitely check it out if you haven't already! 

By the way, I'm trying to get back into the swing of reviewing. It's gonna happen slowly, but rest assured, it will happen. I might not crank out reviews at the rate I was like 5 months ago, but I'll still be trying my best to write more reviews. Thanks for all of your support!