Walking rugged edge of sanity in broad daylight
The Babadook Rating: Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, Tim Purcell Directed by: Jennifer Kent Running time: 93 minutes
It takes guts to walk around in the dark, but even more courage to shoot a horror movie in broad daylight.
The happy rays of day mark the time when characters who are being stalked are given a chance to catch their collective breath while the audience unclenches its twisted intestines. So give Aussie director Jennifer Kent a monster slap on the back for The Babadook, a psychological horror that makes sunlight just as scary as the crepuscular blur.
Familiar in theme, the movie opens with a kid running into his mother’s bed because a monster is in his room. We soon learn Samuel ( Noah Wiseman) has been plagued by night terrors for months, leaving his poor single mother Amelia ( Essie Davis) overtired and edgy. She’s tried to comfort him, but Samuel is obsessed. He thinks about the monster all the time and contemplates killing it, devising a variety of homemade weapons he can use on the creature should it ever appear. Not surprisingly, Samuel’s love of handmade crossbows and backpack trebuchets arouses the attention of school administrators, who want to separate Samuel from the other children. For poor Amelia, it’s becoming too much and she’s really starting to lose her grip.
But just when it looks like Kent is playing with our minds, and taking us on a lurid tour of mental illness, she coughs up a physical prop: A pop- up book called The Babadook.
Gorgeously hand- drawn, The Babadook tells a story of a monster who gets the better of a mother, forcing her to destroy everything she loves most. Sadly, we know mental illness can make a person perform unthinkable acts, which means Kent has a full deck of suspense to play with, and she finesses every card, even the genre losers — such as the possessed kid, the threat to a domestic pet and the inevitable visit from the authorities.
In these highly structured moments, Kent actually finds impromptu bursts of laughter — which only makes the movie feel that much more unhinged.
The key is the level of acceptance. The more Sam and Amelia deny The Babadook, the angrier and more malicious he gets. Conversely, the more they accept the beast, the crazier they look to the outside.
It’s a sick little dance, but as Kent traipses the ragged edge of sanity, we can’t help but follow because we empathize with every character — even the big black sharp- fingered monster that pops up from the dark depths of the subconscious to wreak havoc in the supposed safety of daylight.