Essie Davis stars as Amelia, a young mother who is still grieving the loss of her husband who died seven years ago while driving her to the hospital to give birth to their son. As the anniversary of her husband's death (and her son's birthday) draws near, Amelia is feeling the strain of raising her hyperactive child on her own. Plagued by an overactive imagination, Samuel is convinced that monsters lurk in their house and invents many traps and weapons to defeat them. After finding and reading a horror book disguised as a children's book, they soon begin seeing things that aren't truly there.
I had been avoiding this movie in my queue for some time. Though there were many members who rated this movie highly, Netflix predicted that I wouldn't really like it. Because of the severe difference in ratings between the humans and computers, I decided to give it a shot anyway. Though it wasn't a terrible movie, I have to say that Netflix was correct in how I would rate it. It was...so-so.
Written and directed by Jennifer Kent, The Babadook would be better rated as a Lifetime movie of the week and not a horror film. It is primarily a drama with a few horror elements that are blatantly stolen from numerous other sources. In other words, there is nothing new to see here in the horror genre.
Essie Davis does give an amazing performance of a distraught, severely depressed, and overworked single mother raising a child who is in some serious need of discipline. Noah Wiseman stars as Samuel and does an amazing job of being truly annoying and hyperactive. This is a story of one woman's decent into madness.
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