Director: Jennifer Kent
94 minutes (15) 2014
Second Sight 4K Ultra HD
[Released 26th July]
Rating: 7/10
Review by Christopher Geary
Expanded from the 11-minute B&W short movie Monster (2005), witty Australian chiller The Babadook is writer-director Jennifer Kent’s feature-length debut. A marvellously compact effort, its plot is centred on a mysterious pop-up picture-book - about a weirdly intrusive stranger, that’s not a very wise choice as bedtime reading for any little boy already prone to worrisome nightmares. Six-year-old orphan Samuel (wonderfully played by newcomer Noah Wiseman) irritates his mother Amelia (Essie Davis, from Billy O’Brien’s Irish horror movie Isolation), unable to cope with her son’s increasingly unruly behaviour. Without a wink of sleep, her depression worsens rapidly as the cartoonish, and yet menacing, ‘Mr Babadook’ looms up from the shadows to admirably surrealistic effect.
When
Amelia’s maternal neuroses lead to psychotic episodes, this becomes a delicious
frightener of domestic terror and mental disturbance, fuelled by TV of genre
horrors and epic toothaches. Young Sam fights his mum’s apparent possession
with various Home Alone tricks and
makeshift weapons. Sadly, after building up a considerable momentum, Kent’s
movie falters and almost flat-lines with its bargain-priced poltergeist
showdown, as the screaming Amelia conquers her fear (with the Oz power of
she-la, or something) and practically tames the black-hat demon. It’s a clever
surprise, and a twist that’s fully in keeping with her original short film
(helpfully included on this disc), but I couldn’t help wondering if a wholly darker,
more pessimistic, ending might have worked rather better.
In the end, though, this is a haunted-house melodrama partly about struggles to overcome the crushing distress of grief and, as such, the movie is both artistically extraordinary as a moody genre piece, and satisfyingly worthwhile as a reflection on modern widowhood, stranded amidst uncaring relatives and unsympathetic neighbours. Davis’ performance is emotionally raw, at times, but leavened by directorial humour that embraces the styling of typical art-house cinema. Kent remixes that familiar European brand, imperfectly, but very enjoyably, switching effortlessly between hysterical screaming fits and wacky puppet-theatre antics.
There are similarities to Walter Salles’ spooky Dark Water (2005), the superior American remake of Hideo Nakata’s delirious Japanese horror, where an innocent girl is stalked by an imaginary ‘friend’. However, the cultural tone of this movie is determinedly Australian (yes, that’s a clip from Skippy on Amelia’s TV) even though the single-mother’s sleepless hallucinations conjure up mooda of hopeless dread. Although its uncompromising 'western' story is something very different, Kent’s second movie, The Nightingale, continues the essentially gloomy aesthetic.
4K UHD disc extras:
Commentary track by critics Alexandra Heller-Nicholas and Josh Nelson
An
excellent package of cast-and-crew interviews...
- This Is My House! - interview with Essie Davis (26 minutes)
- The Sister - interview with actress Hayley McElhinney (10 minutes)
- Don’t Let It In - interview with producer Kristina Ceyton (12 minutes)
- Conjuring Nightmares - interview with producer Kristian Moliere (26 minutes)
- Shaping Darkness - interview with editor Simon Njoo (14 minutes)
- If It’s in a Name Or In A Look - interview with designer Alex Holmes (10 minutes)
- The Bookmaker - interview with designer Alexander Juhasz (20 minutes)
- Ba-Ba-Ba...Dook! - interview with composer Jed Kurzel (14 minutes)
Archival
bonus material:
- They Call Him Mister Babadook: making-of featurette (35 minutes)
- There’s No Place Like Home: creating the house (10 minutes)
- Illustrating Evil: creating the book (6 minutes)
- Special Effects: stabbing scene (3 minutes)
- The Stunts (3 minutes)
