The Babadook (2014)
Screen Australia / The South Austrailian Film Corporation / Entertainment One : IFC Midnight / ICON Film Distribution
3 / 10
This is one of those films where you shouldn't believe the hype. After all I'd heard and read about this movie I was really looking forward to it. However, while viewing I soon became aware this was not going to live up to its publicity... and it didn't... it fell woefully short.
Here you have a story of a single widowed mother and her peculiar son who are going through life in a stagnant haze. Her son, Samuel (played by Noah Wiseman) is an intelligent child who has a knack for constructing weapons, for which he is reprimanded at school. Samuel is a solitary child who finds it hard to make friends and keep them. He also has a temper that makes him violent, both physically and vocally, when he's confronted.
Samuels mother, Amelia (played by Essie Davis) works at a care home and dealing with the close to death cronies has its effect on her. She holds onto the memories of her seven-year dead husband, Oskar, in a proverbial death grip, even her own sister has given up on her. Amelia won't let Samuel have his birthday on the date of his birth as Oskar died driving her to the hospital.
Even before the Babadook rears its head, the family is troubled and broken. This should lead to well-rounded and deep characterisations. Instead of this, we get depressed and moody bad parenting from Amelia and shouty stomping belligerence from Samuel. This makes for two very unlikeable characters. If the viewer cannot sympathise, empathise, or in some little way, relate to the main characters then the story and film will not hold their attention... it failed to hold mine... and to be bluntly truthful, I was only watching in the hopes that the Babadook had its evil way with them... I was upset when it didn't.
These two characters are both worse than the snot filled blubbering idiot in The Blair Witch Project.
The there's the story, which in my eyes, tries to say and be too much. It's not sure if it's horror, there are elements of horror in here, though too little for me to put it in the genre. There's drama with all the elements of relationships in tribulation. The film would've been a lot better if some of these elements had been trimmed back and some removed altogether, and the director chose a direction in which to take the film.
So that's what's wrong with the film in my opinion.
So what was right?
The acting from Essie Davis was pretty good especially, later in the film, when her temperament instantly changes. This sent a chill up and down my spine. Noah Wiseman was brilliant in the son's role. I cannot fault the actors, the fault lies with story and direction, which falls on the head of Jennifer Kent who wrote and directed.
That said, apart from the direction of the characters and the story the film was well directed, and at times gave a few chills with prolonged shots of opened wardrobes and corners of rooms, where clothes were hung; the tension created was palpable. So we know that she can direct. Maybe she should've given the story synopsis, which was brilliant and well thought out, over to a writer! I say this as the ending of this movie is why I've placed this into a Dark Fantasy, that and the reason of the Babadook ending up being wimpy (sorry for the spoiler) - this was the biggest let-down of all... a horror movie that tells you there's really nothing to be scared of.
I wouldn't recommend anybody watching this film; there's nothing to get out of it. By the end, I was disheartened.
