The Babadook (2014)

For students of SBBU

Introduction to horror movies

Horror cinema is a monster. Mistreated, misunderstood and subjected to vicious critical attacks, somehow it keeps lumbering forward, leaving a trail of destruction in its wake. Horror movies are focused purely on evoking a reaction – be it terror, disquiet or disgust – with little thought for 'higher' aspirations. For others, they're just a bit of fun: a chance to shriek and snigger at someone's second-hand nightmare.

But look again, and the story of horror is also the story of innovation and non-conformity in cinema, a place where dangerous ideas can be expressed, radical techniques can be explored, and filmmakers outside the mainstream can still make a big cultural splash. If cinema itself has an unconscious, a dark little corner from which new ideas emerge, blinking and malformed, it must be horror. The question is – which are the best horror films?

 

 

The Babadook (2014)

Director: Jennifer Kent

Cast: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman

The mummy’s curse
The territory where scary movies overlap with social realism remains largely unexplored by filmmakers. Horror has traditionally been a genre bent on entertainment – however twisted – and so reminders of real-world tragedy tend to stifle the fun. So props to first-time filmmaker Jennifer Kent for never shying away from her central character’s predicament: yes, our heroine Amelia is being stalked by something supernatural, but we’re never sure if it’s made the life of this grieving single mother appreciably worse. And as women continue to be shut out of filmmaking roles, how satisfying that ‘The Babadook’ was one of the best-reviewed horror movies of the decade so far. Tom Huddleston

Who brings into their home a kid’s book called ‘Mister Babadook’, crammed with drawings of scary toothy shapes peering around bedroom doors? The answer is left deliciously vague in this slow-building, expertly unnerving horror movie built around a broken Australian family.

Amelia (Essie Davis) is a tired-looking carer in a nursing home and grapples with single motherhood in the wake of a car accident that killed her husband while he was driving them to the maternity ward. Samuel (Noah Wiseman), the surviving child, now six, is stuck in his shouty phase, has a hyperactive imagination and is obsessed with weapons. These are precisely the wrong people to be reading dark bedtime stories, yet mysteriously, there’s the book on the shelf.

And there goes your peaceful night’s sleep. Actress-turned-debut-feature-director Jennifer Kent has the storytelling balls to show her entire hand in the pop-up story contained in this freaky book and then make us squirm as events come true. Even more impressively, Kent doesn’t shy away from Amelia’s off-putting mental state, an internal battle between motherly love and obvious resentment. Young Sam will always remind her of her dead husband, and ‘The Babadook’ is female-centric in a way that other horror movies rarely are. It’s a tale in which the real terror might have already happened. Parents, brace yourselves.

Kent is a natural horror director. She favours crisp compositions and unfussy editing, transforming a banal house into a subtle, shadowy threat. You’re not going to be sprung out of your seat by an overzealous sound designer. By the time the beast shows up (a wild creation of puppetry, stop-motion animation and suggestive noises), it’s possible to be just as riveted by Davis’s mouse-turned-lioness performance, tearing into the register of fellow Aussie Cate Blanchett.

If Kent’s goal is to steer horror back toward a rigorous, non-digital realm for serious artists (a welcome trend also seen in last year’s ‘The Conjuring’), her work is done.

BY: JOSHUA ROTHKOPF

Horror film is a film genre that seeks to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on their fears. Inspired by literature from authors 

MOVIE INFO

Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her 'out of control' 6 year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible to love. Samuel's dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called 'The Babadook' turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he's been dreaming about. His hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son's behaviour, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real. (C) IFC