Unseen Terror 2015: Day 30

On the way to the hospital, a pregnant Amelia Vanek experiences a tremendous shock when the car her husband is driving gets into an accident. Thankfully, she and her unborn child survive, but at a great cost: her partner Oskar is killed in the crash. Many years go by, and an emotionally damaged Amelia is now constantly struggling to control her son Samuel, who is excessively active and repeatedly insisting that monsters are out to get him. During a night where he can not sleep, the mother pulls a random, mysterious book from his shelf to read to him: a story about an entity named "The Babadook," which will continuously torment those who are made aware of its existence. Thinking nothing of this peculiarly dark tale, Amelia's disturbance and paranoia suddenly begins to grow as her offspring speaks of this being trying to kill him, and she discovers that there is a truly dark presence that is out to end the both of them.

I'm sure that most of you are well aware of the existence of a very rare breed of horror movie. In a market dominated by motion pictures that serve you only cheap jump scares or the gratuitous bloodbath, which there is nothing wrong with mind you, there are the oft-forgotten ones that truly disturbed or terrified us during the prime of our youth. For me, it was Ridley Scott's Alien and Steven Spielberg's Jaws. They were nightmare-inducing, building tension in a world that seemed destined to collapse under the weight of stress with no absolute, easy solution in sight. Without trying to overhype this particular picture, I can safely say that Jennifer Kent's directorial debut, the oddly-titled The Babadook, has all the makings and traits of a future classic. Heck, one could argue that its current rating on a site such as Rotten Tomatoes is proof of that, but I don't like to bestow something that important and prolific upon any film. Well, not this soon I mean.

What makes The Babadook work so effectively is the film's reliance on tension and atmosphere to help tell a story. Little things begin to pop up, be they random sounds, music dropping in and out, and the always-reliable moments that try and convince the audience that maybe you were just seeing things that aren't there. The concept of a child and their parent(s) being pursued or haunted by an unseen force is far from an original concept, but given Kent's ability to help pull out such tremendous performances from the leads and make them easy to root for, it's easily forgivable. Essie Davis' portrayal of Amelia is nothing short of grand, and she's fully immersed in her role as a fractured, shell of a woman who appears to be struggling with multiple stages of grief while seemingly being unable to keep a grasp of her own sanity because of her child's hyperactive, erratic behavioral issues. I know that many viewers will likely find Noah Wiseman's Samuel to be quite irksome, but as someone who has worked in retail most of his life, I can say that I have seen more children who acted like that then you would think. Plus, his nature and strange tendencies only add to his mother's spiral into depression and the curious intrigue about what seems to be bothering him.


There's also the concern of the titular....thing of the picture. Earlier this month, I reviewed Shadow Of The Vampire, and forgot to mention one, singular thing that helped accentuate that film's positives: Max Schreck's Nosferatu looked really, really unnatural. If you want to concoct or create a truly brilliant boogeyman or monster, you don't always need to have them kill dumb, sex-craved teenagers or even speak semblances of a full-constructed sentence (whether it's for fun or trying to highlight the "I'm not normal/from around here" cliche found in flicks released post-1970). The creature in question, whether you wish to believe Samuel's pleas for help or not, is quite striking and appears to be honest-to-god unsettling. At a certain point, I just stopped taking notes and wondered how disturbed I would have been if I had made the decision to turn off the lights and listen to just the audio on my headphones (Amelia's first "encounter" with it while lying in bed got under my skin). I guarantee that the possibility of me crapping my pants would have been rather high.

There is nothing that I can add to my review to The Babadook that hasn't been previously echoed by any respected journalist or critic (though I have seen horror fans are quite divided on it, especially with its ending). Along with We Need To Talk About Kevin, this is one of the only entries that has legitimately creeped me out so far, filled with fantastic performances and some quite fascinating symbolism that mercifully doesn't come across as pretentious. It is easily in the top three features that I've watched so far, and I am honestly tempted to just end this early because I want to end on a high note. Go buy the movie at any retail store (Shout! Factory has an exclusive Blu-Ray that is rather inexpensive), rent it on your cable box's on-demand feature, or view it on Netflix Instant Streaming.



Tomorrow, it's HALLO-GODDAMN-WEEN. As such, we shall do what was original promised: we will close with a 2015 release. Still, I can't help but wonder if I should cheat and go back to the past, though I suspect that this may become a reality if the project in question is of hit-or-miss quality...