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| (Umbrella Entertainment) |
It’s no
secret: horror films consistently rank among the weakest genre-films being made
today. Repetitive formulas, cheap thrills and over-worked folklore make the
medium hit-or-miss, with misses far more common than hits (and even then...).
Famed directors, from Kubrick and Hitchcock to Polanski and DePalma, have given
us the gold standards of the horror genre, works of art as well as works of
horror, and they've been long gone. Horror moviemaking also happens to be a grossly male-dominated world, as is typical in Hollywood – but, in one
of the best surprises of the year, Jennifer Kent outdoes her male
counterparts with her horror debut feature, The
Babadook. Unlike contemporary hits Insidious or The Conjuring, this film dares to embrace the
banal conventions of the genre to create something unique and truly meaningful,
an homage to the history of horror as well as a (finally!) truly feminist and
humanistic interpretation of the genre.
Amelia
(Essie Davis, exceptional, exceptional, exceptional) works at a nursing home
and takes care of her ill-behaved son Sam (Noah Wiseman, intelligently played)
alone, her husband having died in a car accident the day Sam was born. She’s
called in to a parent-teacher conference, where the administrators inform
Amelia that her son will have to be separated from the other kids and assigned
a monitor. Amelia, the dedicated mother that she is, refuses to make her son
feel more isolated than he already does. Davis plays Amelia with maternal
intensity and an anxiety suggesting something beneath her maternal surface. Her
frazzled hair, her shaky gait and her soft eyes provide this character with
great levity, compassion for a son who is looked on by others with genuine
revulsion.
Sam might
be troubled, but he’s incredibly intelligent and compassionate. He’s a magician
with an exuberant imagination, his hyper-activity stemming from his over-active
mind rather than bad intentions. He cares deeply about his mother, which makes
what commences all the more tragic. Sam picks up a vintage-looking storybook
entitled, "Mister Babadook." It's a ragged, poorly put-together
pop-up story about a monster that lives in the closet, and ends with a
death-threat that sends Sam into hysterics. He walks around the house with a
bow-and-arrow and homemade catapult backpack, and booby-traps the house Home Alone-style, seriously
paranoid about the Babadook. Amelia tears up the book, but it comes back,
pasted together and with new text, reading Dr. Seuss-style, “I’ll wager with
you, I’ll make you a bet. The more you deny, the stronger I get.” She burns the
book, any remaining evidence she might have had to show the police.
With
glass in her porridge and strange sounds all around the house, Sam’s insistence
that the Babadook exists – which climaxes with an emotional outburst
ending with his cousin’s nose breaking – is eventually understood as truth
by Amelia. Despite being aware that her son is not to blame, she begins to
harbor resentment. She’s prescribed sedatives by her doctor in a desperate
attempt to manage some sleep. Radek Ladczuk’s cinematography beautifully
renders each image to show how Amelia is trapped in this nightmare, further
descending down a rabbit hole of despair. We always follow Amelia under those
covers, and light always sets in way too soon, in the blink of an eye. And the
reality sets in that Sam is always there, and he’s not going away. The horror
of the film – the apparition of the Babadook, as he sneaks up in corners,
inhabits the basement, knocks on doors, sneaks in the black clouds – parallels
another journey, one of mental illness, of uncontrollable resentment towards
one’s child.
But the
ambiguity of the story is its insistence on the horror, on Kent’s ingenious
control in making this picture less psychological and more deliciously pulpy. The Babadook not only synchronizes
many genres of horror within this tight space – exorcisms, serial-killers,
monsters, macabre fairy tales – but expresses an admiration for those movies of
days past. The Babadook is the Freddy Kreuger of the Georges Méliès era. The
film is riddled with such references – Amelia’s deteriorating state worsens in
front of the television, where iconic horror movie moments such as the Phantom
of the Opera being unmasked and Nosferatu’s shadow creeping up the stairs
unravel before her eyes. A shaking bed cannot help but remind one of The Exorcist, while a
dog-strangling scene greatly resembles the one in Halloween. In a way, this is a
much-improved version of the original The Amityville Horror,
more substantial and better-directed without resorting to shock tactics. A
newsreel of a mother resorting to killing her own child reminds us of infamous
maternal villains such as Andrea Yates and Susan Smith. This is what Amelia
becomes and must fight to gain back control.
The
unsettling suspense of the film builds to the last thirty minutes, in which
Amelia’s confrontation with the Babadook rips your heart out. Because, while
entertaining us, Kent effortlessly draws out this touching narrative about a
mother fighting for control of her own mind. Davis gives one of the years best
performances, going from a deeply loving parent, to a possessed monster, to a
person desperate to gain back control. Sam can only helplessly watch as his
mother is devoured by the Babadook’s unrelenting grasp, as his mother confronts
the menacing and overwhelming monster.
Seamlessly-edited, tightly-framed and eerily-scored,
Kent succeeds in bringing a genuinely unique aesthetic to the horror genre (you
can tell she really loves horror movies). As freaky as a twisted Dr. Seuss tale
and as brutally honest a take on motherhood as I've seen recently, The Babadook charts new territory. It
shamelessly entertains, reminding us of what the horror genre can do in the
process.
Remember:
always feed the monster.
Grade: A-