Jonathan Landeros

[8.8/10] A good horror movie can come in several different guises. There are slasher flicks, horror comedies, ghost stories, and endless variations of the same macabre notions that each deserve to be judged on their own terms. But at base, no matter what else you think of a horror movie, of its goals and performances and story, you have to give it at least some credit if it manages to scare you.

That’s part of the point, right? That’s why we like popping in movies about things that go bump in the night and tell tales that make our skin crawl. We enjoy the thrill of experiencing these events secondhand from the safety of our couches. The atmosphere can be enjoyable on its own, and it’s certainly possibly to appreciate chills and spills as fun despite being at a remove from them, but at base, we want horror movies to reach out and grab us, to makes us frightened by what’s on the screen, to force us to feel that vicarious terror as victims and survivor scream or fight.

By that metric, The Babadook is the scariest and most successful horror film in ages. It quickly joined the ranks of outstanding films that I never want to see again. And if a horror movie can accomplish that -- not because it’s too gory or too gross, but because it’s horrors are too real to keep confronting -- it must be doing something right.

The film tells the story of Amelia, a widowed, single mom raising her six-year-old son, Samuel, a spirited, well-meaning child with behavioral issues that create more problems for their already beleaguered family. All those real life sorts of problems worsen, a supernatural problem begins to emerge after a mysterious pop-up book Samuel finds foretells the coming of The Babadook, a dark creature who promises grim things to come.

What’s immediately striking about The Babadook is how well and how devastatingly it functions when the ghostly threats are mere whispers that could be explained away by stress and behavioral problems. The first act of the film calls to mind the heart-rending scene in It’s a Wonderful Life when Jimmy Stewart’s character, at his lowest point, asks his wife “Why’d we have all these kids?” It’s a brief but piercing exploration of the sense of being at a loss when you’re doing all you can to take care of your family but the strain of your middle class existence wears you down. The Babadook is that powerful idea, explored with conviction for ninety minutes, long before the titular ghoul ever peeks his head in the doorway.

Instead, the beginning of the film is a parade of horribles. Amelia struggles to make ends meet with a child who needs lots of extra attention. She’s haunted by the memory of her husband, who died in a car accident on the way to the hospital when she was in labor. Every moment she gets to herself, whether it’s a mild break to be alone in the middle of the day, or the simple act of physical pleasure, is interrupted and cause to chastise her for not being the pillar of strength and love everyone expects her to be for half an hour.

With the horror elements excerpted, The Babadook could simply be the sort of portrait of a middle class life that leaves you crestfallen, filled with shame for the lack of resources and lack of understanding available for people who need help and run out of good places to find any. It’s an unflinching look at the intersection of love and guilt, longing and desperation, that face parents of challenging children.

And then a monster shows up.

What’s so impressive about the film is how well it nails that pivot, turning from something that is simply horrible because of the real world difficulties put on display in unvarnished terms, to delivering a creature feature that manages to build on those themes, to play out those same paternal insecurities and resentment on a ghostly scale. At some point, The Babadook transitions from being a story about a woman trying to find peace and do right by herself and by her son in the midst of difficult challenges, to one of a woman trying to protect her and her son from an inhuman monster, and yet it absolutely fits.

That’s partly due to the way much of the film’s horror is psychological. There’s minimal blood and few lethal encounters in The Babadook. Instead, writer-director Jennifer Kent goes for psychological horror. The titular beastie is seen in nebulous form in aside glances and fuzzy reflections. His visage slips into the endless whirr and hum of twilight-channel flipping, and shadows on the wall. Long before the creature makes any sort of full-fledged appearance, he flits in and out as a sign of Amelia unraveling at the unfathomable stress she’s forced to labor under.

And when the threat is confirmed as real, or at least presented as such, the horror is more Lynchian than slasher. The film’s sound design is outstanding (apart from a stock dragon roar I recognized from Power Rangers of all things), with inscrutable noises emerging to unsettle the viewer before any corporeal threat emerges. The camera shakes and shudders as it stays focused on Amelia and Samuel, rending raw their unguarded, at times unhinged reaction to what lurks around the corner in a tactile film focused on each little detail. The rules of The Babadook are fuzzy; its presence and purpose just as inscrutable, making it the sort of unexplainable, unaccountable horror that’s all the more frightening for its unknowable qualities.

But its truest and most lasting scares come when it blends those elements that would be scary in any film, with those that are so disquieting in its first half. The Babadook and its perturbations become a vehicle to confront Amelia with the pain over losing her husband, with her pent up anger and guilt over her son, and for Samuel to confront the heaven and hell he brings to the woman who bore him. The complicated relationship between a harried parent and their guileless but difficult child is given terrible form in gripping scenes that linger long after the credits roll.

Rarely has a film had such stakes, such meaningful, gut-wrenching threats in play, laid out in such unflinching terms. The Babadook is the most chilling film you’re likely to see this Halloween, both for the expert fashion in which Kent delivers her haunting, but also for the visceral examination of a mother and son at their most wounded and desperate, and how well those two facets come together. There are few films with as much truth and as much courage as this one shows, and even fewer that can provide such genuine fright. The pit in your stomach while watching The Babadook says it all; this is the type of horror movie that’s so good, so successful in its effort to unsettle its audience, that you’ll hesitate to face its terrors ever again.

The marketing and trailer of the film suggested a horror movie with a creepy monster. That may well be the case, but this is not a conventional horror film at all - there is far, far more to this outstanding film than that. To say more would give away the plot, but clear hints as to the identity of the “Babadook” and how it fits into the narrative ensure the reveal and resolution are unsurprising. That, though, misses the point - here the journey the audience is taken on is so compelling that the reveal and resolution to the story don’t need to surprise. Essie Davies plays a single mother still coming to terms with the death of her husband and the young Noah Wiseman is her son who is exhibiting behavioural issues. They both give outstanding natural performances and the film is rooted in such verisimilitude that the introduction of the horror element almost feels intrusive. Not that this is unsuccessful either - the “monster’ initially lurks in the shadows, creating a palpable sense of foreboding and dread and the sound design of the film helps to emphasise this, creating some wonderfully creepy moments. Fortunately, rather than worrying about horror conventions and gimmicks to scare, the filmmakers explore far more gripping issues and concerns - that of a mother’s struggle to raise a child on her own and cope with unresolved grief, loss, isolation and helplessness. If there was a minor criticism, it is that the final act occasionally focuses more on the conventions of horror and suspense that had been so carefully balanced throughout. But this is a nitpick at best and doesn’t detract from one of the finest films of the year and a strong message that true horror is as firmly rooted in reality as it is in the supernatural and fantasy.