How did this children’s book get into the house? Nobody seems to know. But no matter — it’s here now, and there’s no escaping it.
Books are like that; you open them, and they become part of your life, for better or worse. This one — it shares its title with the movie we are watching — is called “The Babadook,” which almost makes an anagram for “bad book,” and that’s the effect it has on a mother, Amelia (Essie Davis), and 6-year-old son Sam (Noah Wiseman).
They’re especially vulnerable to its dark magic. Along with other issues they have, the death of the father of this household, some years earlier, is very much in the background of the scary little tale that unfolds.
Amelia reads the book with her troubled and over-imaginative boy, ignoring the timeworn horror-movie warning about chanting the name of the monster. The Babadook is dark-suited and creepy-fingered, and he wears a cape and a Victorian hat, like a creature from an earlier era of horror — suggesting that what’s scary never really goes out of style.
After a great deal of slow-burning buildup, the Babadook becomes real, and mother and son must wage battle — but then they have been all along.
This film is the debut feature by writer-director Jennifer Kent, who does a skillful job of keeping us locked into the moment-by-moment thrills of a monster movie, but also insists that this Babadook is clearly a stand-in for the other issues that inflict the lonely household: grief, guilt, depression, an unwillingness to live life.
And because Kent is Australian, there has to be an undercurrent of curious humor running beneath this disquieting story line — the world is already comically askew, long before the Babadook makes his entrance.
The two leads are excellent, and the throwback pleasures of watching an old-fashioned approach to horror are very real. If this movie isn’t quite the masterpiece some have suggested, it still hits a lot of fascinating moments while generating an impressive number of chills up the spine.
And it smartly gets to the root of so many great horror stories, which brings us back to the question of how the book got into the house. The movie suggests that the book got in because mother and son wished it there. The Babadook may be a monster, but he’s the monster they needed.
“The Babadook” (three stars)
The monster from a children’s book comes alive to torment a mother and son in this debut horror feature by director Jennifer Kent. The movie’s got a slow build-up and an undercurrent of curious humor, but it manages to raise some real chills along the spine.
Rating: Not rated; probably R for subject matter
Showing: SIFF Film Center
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