The Babadook

2014 horror movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: A creepy pop-up book stalks a widow and her young, misbehaving son. Then, something called The Babadook shows up and terrorizes the pair.

As you might know if you've read stuff I've written about other horror movies, I like when my movie monsters best when they're standing in for something more realistic. It's not that a monster that is just a monster isn't capable of entertaining me, but those symbolic monsters add a depth and a realism. The symbolism here is almost too obvious, but it really works to give the ending of this thing a rewarding philosophical depth. If that Babadook--admittedly, sort of a dopey name--was just a monster, this would still mostly work as the top-hatted, oily creature, whether in children's book for or materialized in the pair's home is creepy and cool, like an Edward Gorey character brought to animated life. I'm not sure if he's nearly as terrifying as the little kid in this though. I'm not sure how effective your horror movie is if a first grader out-scares the title monster. Of course, if you've spent a lot of time with first graders, that probably won't surprise you. But seriously, if I have nightmares about this movie, it'll be because of Noah Wiseman's eyes rather than the Babadook. Throw this kid Samuel in with all those other classic horror movie kids. I like how this manages to creep you out without a lot of tricks. There's a visual style to the storytelling, but nothing's jumping out at you and yelling "Boo!" with a screechy violin noise. It's got that quietly creepy vibe, and that restraint allows it all to sort of seep in. I think my favorite thing about this movie is that while visually, you don't really believe anything that's going on, this still manages to feel very real on an emotional level. I'd recommend it to horror fans especially--William Friedkin said it was the most terrifying film he's ever seen--but probably even to people who don't like horror movies all that much.