English Audio Description?: Yes

Still catching up on old Halloween titles, and I finally watched The Babadook. Now, I can understand the hype to some extent. it wasn’t the scariest thing I’d ever seen, but it had a lot going for it. Basically, this Australian horror film centers around a mom, who is still recovering from some grief, and her son, and how the world doesn’t want her son. Honestly, that’s the one thing this film did the best. We all love our kids, but even this guy is a bit much. The direction here was so much to make this kid seem like he’s all over the place so that you can understand why his mom is so frustrated. I have to commend her early efforts at not just medicating him. If he were my kid, I’d make him run laps around the house until he was tired.

Insomnia is such a huge part of this film, as her son won’t sleep, and she can’t sleep as a result. Everyone is perpetually on Red Bull and sugar, maybe even cocaine, in this film. mom is exhausted, but her kid seems to lack the need to sleep. he’s been kicked out of school, child services is lurking, and her son can’t be trusted around other kids. Before anyone ever reads The Babadook, her life is a nightmare that I feel is far too relatable for some parents.

But then, the book is opened, and suddenly this presence starts to manifest, but is it really? is this born out of a lack of sleep, an overactive child, and grief that hasn’t been dealt with? I can see how individual interpretation is allowed, and different people will have different experiences from this.

is it bone chilling horror? no. It’s creepy, sure. but it turns much more into a psychological horror than a jump scare extravaganza. The audio description I had did a good job with all the various elements of the movie, as it is always evolving slowly into madness. Where you start is not where you end. I don’t want to ruin the journey, but this movie deserves to be a lot more than just a meme.

I thought this was a well crafted, well acted story, that makes some bold choices and sticks to them. it unapologetically has a kid that makes you question how you would choose to handle certain circumstances, and then throws a dead husband at the mother to further amplify the catastrophe that is her situation. the titular monster is almost an afterthought. The real monster here is a lack of mental health.

Final Grade: A-