What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you hear a name like The Babadook? Probably some strange creature from an unfinished Dr Seuss novella or perhaps the mindless ramblings of a small child that doesn’t even have its own website and legion of followers. In this case, The Babadook is the name of a horror movie and the subsequent The Babadook Movie Review. It could also have a bunch of different definitions, but I didn’t do any research so this is what you get instead.
The movie starts off with a disturbing flashback of a car accident followed by a mother reading a bedtime story to her son. The son Macgyver’s a rocket and proves his worth as an up-and-coming magician much to the dismay of his mother who would rather snooze her alarm for eternity. The son is essentially kicked out of school due because forging a weapon and showing it off to your classmates is frowned upon and the mother chooses to thoroughly analyze possibly the creepiest children’s story ever written before banishing it to the top of a wardrobe and proceeding to enjoy the comforts of a vibrating companion. That’s when things begin to get weird and unsettling.
So the kid is both a huge fan of The Babadook and also petrified (literally at one point) by the thought of its existence. This is evident by his willingness to destroy it when it appears and threaten his mother of its existence on behalf of the creature. This, of course, occurs despite never actually seeing the creature or really having any sort confirmation of anything to Fear other than a few loosely interconnected moments like clothing hanging from a wall, glass in a bowl of soup and a dog being afraid of firecrackers. In the early goings, this is much more of a psychological thriller than it is anything related to horror of any kind but it has its moments.
The first time The Babadook reaches out to interact with the mother directly is extremely disturbing. I won’t ruin the specifics of it but it involves a hand-crafted book, a phone call, a paranoid visit to the police, a fridge being moved and a visit from a judgmental team of child investigators. Fans of unsettling images and creepy situations will get a kick out of the sequence of events that transpire next including a visit Mr. Doooooooooook himself and the mom needing to take a trip to her dentist because she is most definitely not acting like her usual somewhat functioning self.
So things sort of fall off the rails just a wee bit when the mom starts floating around and threatening the child who responds with a harpoon to her arm. After a late-night visit from an elderly neighbour, the child finds the opportunity to sneak away but decides to make things a little bit more Conjuring-esque instead. This sort of just wraps the movie up in a neat little bow rather than really progressing things any further which was disappointing. And loud.
All things considered, pretty decent movie. It’s also a foreign film, technically, since it’s from Australia and that’s not the same as Canada. If you enjoyed this The Babadook Movie Review and want to actually watch it for yourself and act surprised when you see it, you can probably find it on Netflix.
