Film Review: Horror films of the past inform ‘The Babadook’
The one-sentence log line for “The Babadook” sounds generic and tiresomely familiar: Mom must protect her son from a hideous monster residing in their house.
But Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent’s debut feature gives it some new elements and presents them with a distinctive visual style from the very start. Her heroine, Amelia (Essie Davis), has strange dreams and a tough life; she works hard in a nursing home, feeling the frustration of trying to communicate with ancient dementia patients.
It would be nice if she could go home at day’s end and relax, but unfortunately home is even more trying than work. Her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), is, at a minimum, odd. At a maximum, he’s a complete terror: he’s a troublemaker at school, a bed-wetter at home, and a constant screamer everywhere. Worse yet, he builds makeshift (but effective) weapons to keep monsters from hurting him or Mom. The seriousness of his enterprise makes him, as the phrase goes, a danger to himself and others. In his world, monsters are absolutely real.
In truth, the family has a monstrous — or at least horrible — background. Seven years ago, as husband Oskar (Ben Winspear) was driving her to the maternity ward, there was a horrible car accident. Oskar was killed; Amelia and the Fetus Soon to Be Known as Samuel survived — together with a boatload of traumatic memories. As a result, they never celebrate Sam’s birthday on the actual day — the anniversary of his father’s brutal death — but a few days earlier, in tandem with his cousin’s birthday.
One night, Sam asks Amelia to read him a storybook she’s never seen before — “Mister Babadook.” The pop-up illustrations show a scary man with fangs and claw-like hands, all dressed in black. “He comes with a rumble and then three knocks, but if you let him in,” the book warns, “you’ll wish you were dead.”
Not surprisingly, Mr. Babadook becomes the central monster in Sam’s personal house of horrors. Amelia tries to destroy the book, but it comes back with new threats added. (A plot point that Kent sails right by is where Sam found the book. Amelia never asks Sam, which seems odd.)
Soon Amelia starts hearing things, and she can’t sleep, and so she hears more things, and so she can’t sleep... and on and on. (She does nod out in front of the TV, which seems to play nothing beyond horror stories and “Skippy the Bush Kangaroo.”) She rapidly declines and we begin to wonder who’s imagining what or whether the “what” is real. Maybe it’s a good thing after all that Sam has built a crossbow.
“The Babadook” has its roots in “Monster,” a 10-minute short (easy to find on YouTube) Kent made in 2005. “Monster” had a clever twist, but not much else thematically. “The Babadook” is vastly richer beneath the surface.
Visually, Kent has a knack for investing everyday objects and actions with palpable unease. We begin to see Mr. Babadook in the background, but on second look the images turn out to be closets and coat racks. (Or did they change?) At times, the rhythm as she cuts between Amelia and Sam is just off kilter enough to tease us with frights we imagine are about to happen.
Kent has clearly watched David Lynch’s films — light fixtures constantly sizzle or go dark with no reason — and the movie has moments recalling “Poltergeist,” “The Exorcist” and Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s underrated 2011 “Intruders.” Although she synthesizes all these into something her own, the real reference point here is Polanski’s “Repulsion,” a damn good model for queasy terror if you can stand the comparison. Kent may not be Polanski, but she’s learned all that particular movie can teach.
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ANDY KLEIN is the film critic for Marquee. He can also be heard on “FilmWeek” on KPCC-FM (89.3).