The Babadook – Toronto After Dark 2014 Review

You can’t get away from the Babadook.

More like, “you can’t get away from the most abhorrently annoying child EVER and your ovaries shrivel up and DIE.”

Well, for the first half of the film anyway.

The Babadook is an Australian horror film about a 6 year old boy named Samuel, and his widowed mother, Amelia. Samuel is kind of an asshole. He is constantly in trouble at school, makes extremely dangerous weapons (like a dart crossbow – the fuck!?), and screams “MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY! MOMMY!” over and over to the point where I’m sure my stankface was apparent to those next to me. Well, I’ll give Sam credit – he WAS seeing a monster.

Mister Babadook is a book that mysteriously shows up on Sam’s shelf. The more Amelia reads, the worse it gets, and it becomes very clear (mainly because of Samuel shrieking) that this book is pretty messed up. She tries to dispose of the book, but it keeps mysteriously showing back up in true ghost monster book fashion.

WHAT DOES THIS ALL MEAN!?

It means that Samuel may or may not be insane, and the Babadook is loud, proud, and not going away anytime soon.

One of the film’s biggest strengths, I found, was that you never get an actual clear look of the Babadook as he wreaks havoc in their lives. At first, Amelia can’t see him. Then, it’s something that looks like his hat in a shadow, or his Salad Fingers-like hands in a corner, or a dark, menacing shadow hovering over the caring elderly neighbour. And it’s all creepy as heck. Subtle terror in the form of watching the victims react to it can bring about a much stronger reaction than blatant blood and guts.

Witnessing Amelia mentally shatter while trying to hold herself and her son together (while both of them fall apart in their own ways) was extremely tense from the moment it became clear she was having trouble. There isn’t a moment in the film before the final scene where her hair is completely unkempt, and her lack of sleep is apparent to the point of certain empathy from the audience.

Visually, the film is gorgeous. Heavily muted blues and greys inside the home, contrasting against the splash of dark, vivid red introduced by Mister Babadook’s Story of Nope and AAAAUGH. Even during the outside scenes, there is a slightly dismal look of it. They’re just not having a very good time at all.

You could hear a pin drop during almost the entire film; the audience was completely captivated.

Without spoiling the ending, Amelia begins to realize who/what Babadook is and wants to take back her home, and her son. The climax is a nail-biter, letting Babadook loose full force on Samuel and Amelia in an attempt to take over.

Whether he succeeds or not, and whether Samuel becomes slightly tolerable, I’ll leave it to you to find out. But if you enjoy visually striking horror films, The Babadook need to be on your list.