Noah Wiseman, Essie Davis
“THE BABADOOK” My rating: B+
93 minutes | No MPAA rating
The Australian-made “The Babadook” so seamlessly merges the supernatural with the psychological that it’s impossible to say if what we see on the screen is really happening or if it’s unfolding in its tortured heroine’s head.
Either way, writer/director Jennifer Kent has given us an unnerving experience, marked by two superlative performances that grab us by the throat and won’t let go.
Amelia (Essie Davis) is a widow raising her seven-year-old son Sam (Noah Wiseman). Like a lot of single moms, she’s struggling — financially, emotionally, sexually.
But Amelia has a special cross to bear, for Sam is, well, different. The kid is cute and bright and is working on a magic act. But he’s also a handful, a tyke who so fears monsters under his bed that he has fashioned his own dart-shooting crossbow and a shoulder-mounted catapult to hold them at bay.
That’s only the beginning of Sam’s behavioral problems. He rarely sleeps through a night, usually waking Amelia to search his room for supernatural invaders (she is majorly sleep deprived). During waking hours Sam demands his mother’s undivided attention and he’ll throw a grand mal temper tantrum when he doesn’t get it.
Other children and their parents are creeped out by Sam, who has no friends.
Amelia is worried sick about her boy — but her love is slowly twisting into something like hatred.
One day Sam finds on his bookshelf a volume called Mister Babadook. Inside is a poem about a fiendish creature who stalks little boys and their mothers. The pop-up illustrations look like something Ralph Steadman would do in a moment of acute psychosis.
Sam is so terrified of the Babadook that Amelia tears the book up and throws it in the trash. But soon it’s back, its shredded pages taped back together. Next time she burns it…but it returns in one piece. In fact, it now has additional pages illustrating how a Mommy kills the family pet and sacrifices her child to the Babadook.
You don’t expect two of the year’s best performances to be delivered in a horror film. But Davis and Wiseman are little short of incredible.
She perfectly captures a parent’s fears for an unstable and destructive child, then moves on to full-throttle psychosis. It’s pitiable and terrifying in equal measure.
Young Master Wiseman is her perfect match — you can’t tell if he’s just a sad little boy or some sort of demon-spawn.
Is it all taking place in Mom’s head, or is the Babadook for real? In the end it doesn’t matter for the outcome is the same.
What we can be sure of is that with her first feature, Jennifer Kent has delivered a small masterpiece.
| Robert W. Butler
*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT* Saw this last night and if affected me deeply. I believe the Babadook is grief itself, and it has a serious hold on Amelia. I don’t think Samuel was necessarily a bad child, but he was raised by a woman in the midst of great sorrow. In the end, Amelia accepted the fact that the Babadook would always be with her, but she learned how to control it enough so she could move forward. As a bereaved parent, I immediately recognized what the Babadook was.