The Babadook (2014) Review

Title: The Babadook
Year: 2014
Director: Jennifer Kent
Country: Australia
Language: English

"If it's an a word, or if it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook." Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent crafted an endlessly rewatchable horror movie icon with The Babadook. The film is a frightening, and fun, psychological horror that explores themes of mental health, in particular grief. In retrospect it helped usher in a renaissance of  spooky films (Midsommar, Get Out) that challenged convention with challenging and innovative narratives. 

A single mother (Eddie Davis) and her child (Noah Wiseman) fall into a deep well of paranoia when an eerie children's book titled "Mister Babadook" manifests in their home.

The Babadook is a sophisticated technical masterpiece. The set design was created in such a way that the film, excluding outdoor scenes, looks like its part of a stage performance akin to Lars Von Trier's Dogville. The director uses our imagination to build up The Babadook and then delivers on our expectations to frightening cinematic reality. Cinematographer Radoslaw Ladczuk does a tremendous job at making each scene as claustrophobic and eerie as possible. 

The Babadook walks a fine line between reality and fantasy; we're never quite sure if the Babadook is a real monster or the product of a mind gone mad. The effects, many of them practical, give the picture an uncanny valley feel. Kent truly innovates the horror genre by using the eponymous villain to deconstruct our characters' emotional turmoil and create an alarming profile of a maternal affection gone haywire. 

Comparisons could be made to Stanley Kubrick's The Shining in regards to the film's careful analysis of mental illness. The Babadook is a remarkable film, a new staple of the horror genre that will inevitably be considered a classic. I look forward to rewatching it in the future.