The Babadook

I am torn on The Babadook. There is so much to love about it. Speaking strictly on the horror aspects of the movie, writer/director Jennifer Kent has built the kind of movie could be used in film school on how to build tension and atmosphere. No jump scares, minimal use of the titular antagonist and mostly obscured in shadows, and no need for excessive gore or violence. The Babadook's slow-building horror, as young Samuel -- already troubled before he and his mom find the mysterious and terrible book on his bookshelf -- gets on his exasperated mother's nerves, until she is worn down and paranoid that his usually fanciful delusions might be right, are a master class. The way Kent uses a small setting, just an ordinary house, and fills every square inch of it with dread is nothing short of amazing. The acting is also beyond excellent. Essie Davis plays exhausted single mother Amelia, struggling to make ends meet and deal with a six-year-old son whose behavior is erratic, occasionally dangerous, and now becoming obsessed with what she thinks are imaginary monsters, all the while not allowing herself to process the grief of losing her husband or the complicated feelings around it. He died in a car accident taking her to the hospital to have young Samuel, so there's also some deep-seated resentment of her own son mixed into her grief. Davis is a marvel at showing the simple exhaustion of parenthood, the agony of denying your own feelings because parenting takes precedence, and the seething anger just below that at the life lost and the living symbol of how that life was taken. Noah Wiseman plays young Samuel, and he does an equally fine job, alternating between vulnerable, chaotic, loving, and unstable, but coming from a place of youthful ignorance. He's a kid dealing with a mother going through things he can't understand and isn't processing them any better than she's processing her own issues. This is a family that is collapsing, day by day, as these issues go unaddressed, and their performances give The Babadook a beating heart and soul. I love those aspects. I really do. But I don't love The Babadook, because of one thing. One very crucial thing. The metaphor of the movie isn't a metaphor. It is obvious to all but the comatose or the brain-dead that The Babadook is a manifestation and metaphor for Amelia's inner turmoil. It is literalized in the most blunt, unsophisticated way possible, and the movie never relents in pounding you over the head with it. It is not unsubtle in the way of Black Christmas 2019 or Initiation, where the message is being delivered in a belligerent way, like shoving a dog's nose in their own droppings. The Babadook is more like Pink Floyd's The Wall, where the metaphor's function as a metaphor is overshadowed by the author's inability to be anything but uncomfortably honest and painfully blunt. Being so unrefined critically undercuts the movie's intelligence. If it dropped the pretense of metaphor, or layered the metaphor to the point of obscurity, I'd have more respect for the movie, but it wants to have its cake and eat it too. If the movie is going to constantly pass me a note explaining the symbolism, then just dispense with the symbolism already. Also, and this is far less of a critical error, but it still bugged me ... the climax and the ending suck. The climax is cribbed from Nancy's final showdown with Freddy at the end of A Nightmare On Elm Street. Its unoriginality makes the movie feel like Kent couldn't find a way out of the corner she wrote herself into. But then she doubled down and made the monster real in the end? I say that as a question because I just don't understand the final minute or two of the movie. My wife thinks the Babadook is a real entity looking for a mother, and Amelia's defiance and defense of Samuel put it in check. Maybe? I don't know. I just know it up-ends the metaphor that's been at play for 90 minutes, and detracts from the movie just a little more. It just doesn't fit the logic of what happened before it. Hopefully, this adequately explains why I'm torn. I know this has a sterling reputation, and ... I guess I get it? People are digging the vibes and the atmosphere, and that's fine. I like it too. But I can't let that overshadow the 7th grade attempt at symbolism, or the rotten ending that makes the whole thing stand on its head. It's a movie that has the right intentions, but needed a more delicate hand weaving the themes it wants to explore with the voice it wants to use.