The Babadook
(2014)
(SPOILERS) Jennifer Kent’s feature debut received a plethora
of admiring notices on its release, acclaimed as a genuinely scary and
seriously subtextual horror movie. The
Babadook is certainly a well-made picture, and features a stunning
performance from Essie Davis as a fractured parent stricken with grief and
plagued by demons. But is it really all that special or different? It is
virtually incumbent on horror to promise critical readings, deserved or
otherwise, and this one is actually more effective before it reduces to overtly
Repulsion-esque fare.
Kent’s screenplay offers little in the way of narrative
twists and turns so, other than the old “the monster was in her mind all along”,
it doesn’t have a whole lot else in its arsenal. I wouldn’t call the last half
pedestrian, but the beats are decidedly familiar. More, the fear factor of
Davis’ beleaguered widow Amelia, possessed by the title character and railing
against son Samuel (Noah Wiseman, plausibly eccentric and unsettling when he
needs to be), takes the form of slightly clumsy broad strokes, distancing us
from a far more immediate and recognisable abuse scenario.
The picture’s trump card comes prior to this, setting its
store by positing Samuel as the one of questionable disposition (the disruptive
kid at school, consumed with dark thoughts and actions, who receives the blame even
though everything he does is a consequence of his parent’s behaviour). He’s the
one going on interminably about the Babadook, driving his mother and extended
family to distraction. There are also the classic intimations of demon child
horror movies; apparently hugging her mum inappropriately, entering her the bedroom
while she is masturbating, (apparently) scratching out a photo of Amelia and
her husband and (apparently) putting glass in her soup.
But then the picture switches; Amelia inhales essence of
Babadook and begins acting out. We realise that the (eerily over-protective)
son really is defending his mother
from evil. Unfortunately, the reveal is only briefly effective, as the picture
veers into a welter of horror clichés of the disturbed kind. Amelie wanders
about the house with a kitchen knife, sees glimpses of the Babadook everywhere
(some of these are mildly effective; others, such as an attack on her car while
driving, are risible), finds her kitchen infested with cockroaches (oh lord,
not cockroaches!) and is plagued by a troublesome tooth she plucks out in her
possessed state.
Worse, Kent feels obliged to indulge the very most over-used
of horror tropes, pet violence. We know that the poor pooch is getting to get
it as soon as we witness a strangled hound in The Bababook book, and sure
enough she breaks its neck and drops the poor pooch inert on the kitchen floor.
What has been a picture lending itself to subtle shadings and interpretations
suddenly finds itself with little or no restraint.
The Babadook is told from Amelia’s point of view, so the
actual manner in which we come to realise her affliction as all-consuming is
quite well characterised. Kent just doesn’t really know what to do when she
gets there. Amelia resents Samuel, who has replaced the husband she really
longs for; she refuses to celebrate her son’s birthday (the day her husband
died), but it’s only when we realise the extent of her malaise that this seems
wholly unreasonable. It’s the same with the access-barred basement full of his
possessions.
The problem is, the picture is so precise in its metaphor
that Kent ends up diluting its effectiveness and resonance. The Shining plays with ambiguity of how
much is in Jack’s head and how much the Overlook itself is mental, but The Babadook invites an all-encompassing
reading of maternal madness. Such that Amelia taking her imprisoned grief an on-the-nose
bowl of worms at the conclusion (feeding her grief just enough, keeping it in
check). The monochrome decoration of the house adds to this sense of the
over-stated. It could be the sort of thing you see in a Tim Burton picture; I
almost expected it to splash with colour once the family was released.
On the plus side, the rendering of the terror book itself is
great, eerily illustrated and with the kind of deeply disturbing undertones of
a Struwwelpeter (Kent has apparently
indicated that Amelia is not its
author, but it would makes sense for how it got into the house in the first
place, and that it is unfinished).
The more subtle character details are arresting,
and allow for less instructive interpretation (Samuel might be labelled
aspergic, and the recourse to medicate him by a frustrated parent might be
regarded as a critique of the tendency to control that which is non-conforming;
the Alzheimer’s neighbour is the most sympathetic character, and the one who
vouches for Samuel’s ability to see things as they are – it is the suburban
ne’er-do-wells like Amelia’s sister and friends who are marked out as blinkered
and uncaring).
And Kent has an eye for the rhythm and movement of the scene; the
trip to the police station and the sight of Babadook clothing on a coat hook;
the visit by child services, shadowing Amelia’s movement towards the kitchen;
possessed Amelia shimmering across the floor towards her son. Kent has made a
handsome picture, blessed with two strong central performances, but in the
final analysis it is a little too thematically literal to fully satisfy.
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