FILM REVIEW: The Babadook

If you want a scary movie that isn’t that scary, then this is the film for you.
This film is titled “The Badabook”. It is a horror film where a mom must deal with her child who
thinks that there is a monster haunting them, but his mom is soon to find out whether this
monster is real or not.

“The Babadook” is a film released in 2014 directed by Jennifer Kent. Starring Essie Davis as
Amelia and Noah Wiseman as Samuel as the main characters. The plot about a single mother
having a complex relationship with her child may not be unique, but it is executed it here well
where they deal with the struggle of loss and pain. And eventually dealing with a bigger
problem.

The film starts with Amelia Vanek who dreamt of what happened to her husband Oskar, in which
it was the night he died in an accident trying to get his wife to the hospital due to their child
starting to come out. Then she wakes up to the sound of Samuel, her son using a weapon he
created to deal with a “monster”, and he fires it breaking a window. They both prepare to get to
their perspective places and his mother scolds him telling him “This monster things got to stop”.
Sam keeps telling his mom to look at him as he performs his magic trick. Sam’s mom drops him
off at school but later gets a call about him causing trouble in his class because of a weapon he
brought. The school wanted Sam to be taught one on one but Emilia refuses this as Sam
already feels so different and they’ll just leave him out, so she tells them she’ll just find another
school that accepts him. On the way home, Samuel tells his mom that his teacher hates him,
and his mom just comforts him. They stop by at a supermarket and Sam’s mom sees her kid
interacting with a little girl, she goes to them immediately and the girl’s mom says it’s alright.
When they mentioned they’re going home to see their dad Samuel brings up how his dad died.
Amelia meets Claire and she was telling something to Amelia, but she is clearly spacing out. As
Samuel is playing in the park he gets into an accident. They go home with Sam crying in the car
and her mom visibly upset. They got home and they saw Mrs. Rose, their neighbor. She saw
and told Sam that he looked tired, and his mom just said he had a big day. She also saw how
tired Amelia was. They check the bedroom to see if there’s anything and they get to bed, and
she asks Sam to pick a book to read for the night and get a book titled “The Babadook”. As they
read it gets more and more creepy and it ends with Sam crying and her mom reading a different
book. After that, Amelia hides the book. The next day Sam got in trouble in Claire’s house for
talking about the Babadook to Ruby. She caught Sam in the basement and scolded him for
being there as all her father’s things are in there and Sam complains saying that he’s his dad
too. Robbie visits their house and gives gifts too Amelia and Samuel. When Robbie found out
Sam wasn’t sick, Amelia just told the truth and Sam got mad at her mom because of the lies.
While they eat, they find glass shards in their food and Sam blames it on the Babadook. And his
mom just tells him to watch it on his DVD. She goes up to find a photo of her husband
vandalized and scolds Sam for it, He immediately prepares his weapon, and his mom takes it
away and Sam just screams at her mom saying, “DO YOU WANT TO DIE?”. While Amelia was
stressed downstairs, she heard sounds upstairs to find Sam hiding under the bed. He repeats
the words “don’t let it in” and his mom rips the Babadook book and throws it. The next day they
 attend Ruby’s birthday and Sam is just screaming. Sam and Ruby fight and Ruby talks about
how Sam isn’t good enough to have a dad, so he pushes her off the tree house. Claire gets
upset about that. Samuel was just crying and screaming at the car and Amelia yells at him
saying things like why can’t he just be normal and saying the Babadook isn’t real. And he gets a
seizure. They go to a doctor, and she asks for sedatives as she hasn’t slept well. The next day
she gets the Babadook book again reassembled and reads it. It’s even creepier this time with
messages like if she keeps denying it, the stronger it grows. It also has images of her killing her
dog and son. She burnt the book and reported to the police about a potential stalker, she sees a
strange figure in the station and goes home scared. And gets mad at Ms. Rose for bringing up
Oskar. At home she hallucinates about cockroaches in her home. That night she dreamt of the
Babadook and woke up scared. She went down to watch a film only to even see the Babadook
there. She wakes up late and Sam is hungry, and she gets mad at him. She apologizes and
they head out. It appears that Amelia’s mental state has gone down a lot already. While driving
they start seeing cockroaches and banging on their car and they crash into another person.
At night, she caught Samuel calling Ms. Rose and she got really mad at him and when Sam told
his mom that he just wanted to protect her from the Babadook she just kept denying its
existence and locked every door so that nothing gets inside. She gets mad at Samuel again for
not drinking his pills. While watching a movie his mom hallucinated Sam being dead and when
she snapped out of it she was already holding a knife. She said sorry to Sam and got him ice
cream. She goes to the basement and sees her dead husband again and he asks her to bring
him the boy. But she runs away and then finally gets possessed by the Babadook. While
possessed she kills her dog Bugsy and tries to kill Samuel but with the several weapons and
contraptions he made, he managed to knock out and tie up his mother in the basement. She
wakes up and while Sam was trying to convince her she strangled Samuel and when he lovingly
caressed her face she snapped out of the Babadook’s control. The Babadook takes away
Samuel upstairs and the two finally confronted it. She is forced to see a vision of her husband’s
death again but she got furious and screamed at the Babadook. It got scared and retreated to
the basement. The next day, both mother and son celebrated Samuel’s birthday. She is now
much more loving towards his son and Amelia has accepted her husband’s death. They both
collect worms and bring it to the basement to feed to the Babadook. When it tried to attack her
she soothes it and it took it’s plate. She goes back up to their yard to continue Samuel’s
birthday.

While watching this movie I felt sad, on edge and anxious for what was about to happen. From
the start I could feel Amelia’s struggles in raising her child on her own with the fact that he is
unique and has his own problems that even affect Amelia too. The decline of Amelia’s mental
state could be seen as she gets angrier towards Sam and even her friends and became worse
when the Babadook influenced her. The Babadook itself never appeared much in the film but I
felt suspense readying myself whether it would appear or not.

The use of a grayer look at the film showed how sad the scene was. And the look of Amelia gets
messier as her mental state declines with her being less and less proper. The use of different
background sounds especially when Samuel is having a fit or a meltdown in Amelia’s car. Or
used in scenes where the Babadook shows up in which it creates an air of fear and suspense
about what’s about to happen. This film really felt sad and depressing near the start but at least
it ended happily for our characters. This film shows how denying your grief and pain would only
make it worse. The longer it is left there without doing anything, the stronger it gets. This film
shows that even if that grief and pain is still there, instead of denying it, we should accept it
instead.

Overall, This movie is a good watch if you want something that’ll give you some suspense and
fear. If you’re a parent, you might relate to the struggles of raising a child, especially when
you’re on your own sometimes. This film can also teach us a valuable lesson about grief and
pain from losing a loved one. Is that we should accept it and not deny it.
This film is something I recommend! If you have time, you should go ahead and watch it as it
doesn’t have much of a long runtime either.