The Babadook

[baal666]

Before the movie :

The Babadook is an Australian horror movie directed by Jennifer Kent based on her previous work, the short film Monster which was her only work as a director. The movie was shown at some festivals earlier this year and all the reviews i read were praising it, this caught my attention but i didn't have the opportunity to watch it before tonight.

Movie Plot :

Amelia is a lonely mom since her husband died in a car accident while driving her to the hospital to give birth to their son, Sam, she has difficulty to love her son and is struggling to raise him.

Sam is a very disturbed child, obsessed with the idea that a bad monster is hiding in his room to the point that he crafted weapons to defend himself, this became a problem when Sam brought on of his weapon at school, forcing his mom to keep him home.

At night, Sam tells his mother to read him a pop-up book called The Babadook, the book is about a monster who torments people once they know he exists, this scares the kid who is now convinced that Babadook is in their home and Amelia find it disturbing that a children's book would be so weird.

The day after, strange things seem to happen to Sam but Amelia is convinced that her kid is just faking it, but is he really or is the Babadook having fun scaring the kid ?

My impressions :

+ It's nice to see something else than gore or jumpscares.
+ Both actors, who play Amelia and Sam, are great.
+ The evolution of Amelia throughout the movie is interesting
+ The topic, centered around children's fear of monsters and not being loved gives a strange and disturbing atmosphere.
+ The sound, the movie doesn't have much music except when there is the book or something happening, so we are looking everywhere trying to find what is happening.

- The kid is annoying as hell, kicking and screaming, the kind of kid you want to slap to shut him up.
- Not scary, at least to me. It's a good idea to center things around children's fear but it only felt a bit disturbing at times and not scary.
- The ending is disappointing. I guess i understood it's meaning and symbolism but it's too quick and fell flat.

To conclude, i'm not disappointed. Even though most reviews were great i didn't expect that much from this movie, if you haven't seen it and plan to, you have to know that it's very slow, but i think it's worth giving it a shot, you'll either like it or hate it but at least it's something different.

<big><big>7.5/10</big></big>

I'm sorry if it's badly written/have typos, i didn't read myself before posting, it's a bit rushed but it's the second time i write it but it's 5:30 AM and i have to sleep.