Hey there friendship. How are you doing? Have you been in a bit of a downward spiral post Halloween? Not quite ready to put away all the spoopy decorations and prepare for the white hell known as Christian Christmas? Me either. I had my heart set on some spoopy times after Halloween and had heard some pretty great things about the Babadook, and sorry to say it, but this movie left me with more questions than answers. That said, our friend Ghoulish Gary Pullin did some amazing artwork for the movie, and you should also give him some online love by clicking that little hyperlink.
Some come join me as I become supremely underwhelmed by the Babadook.
Honestly, I really wanted to like this film. It seemed pretty creepy in the trailer and even though Scotty scoffed at me for it, I held out hope that this movie would blow my pants off. The story goes that Amelia was in the process of farting out her young and totally creepy son Samuel and her husband was killed in a car accident while driving them to the hospital. Her husband Oskar was pretty babely, so Amelia is of course pretty bummed out because I’d rather have the D than a B (baby that is). Amelia is struggling with her depressing job, freaky ass kid, and being super busted up about losing her man. She has not been able to celebrate the birthday of Sam, who shares his special day with the day of his father’s death. Like all people who are potentially going crazy, Amelia isn’t really sleeping, and instead she spends her hours of sleep tripping the fuck out and having out of body experiences.
ambien is a helluva drug
Her son Samuel is creepy as fuck as spends the majority of his time fighting invisible monsters, building weapons, and yelling “DIE DIE DIE” at nothing, so yeah, his father’s untimely death hasn’t affected him at all.
One night and for no reason at all, Samuel selects a book called Mister Babadook from his shelf and his mom goes “oh where did you get this?” and has no recollection of giving this book to her son and figures hey what the hell, let’s read it anyways. The book is creepy as all fuck and tells the story of Mister Babadook coming to their house, possessing Mom and making her kill the whole family. Cheerful bedtime reading for sure.
This family is so busted as fuck.. The house they live in is really grotty and the lady has a fucking twin bed, a really gross old dirty dog that maybe should be white, but looks all stained like a crackhouse rug, and in one scene she pulls the hugest vibrator ever out of her sewing kit and starts going to town on herself and that vibrator looked like an old cordless phone from the 90s, and I almost had a stroke. Lady, we know you’re fucked up about losing your husband, but I’m pretty sure you could afford at least a nice vibrator.. jesus. They sell them on amazon now for cheap. I couldn’t get over this woman diddling her old snatcharini with a fucking dirty old phone.. no wonder nobody wants to fuck you on that busted ass twin bed of yours. Shit.
DO IT TO ME DADDY
The thing that really gets my goat with this movie is that it does a really good job of making the Babadook seem pretty creepy. Samuel is the first person to start really interacting with the Babadook, which is kind of like the boogeyman. The Babadook plays your typical poltergeist style pranks around the house – glass in the soup, talking to the kid, and eventually driving the kid a little bit batshit and results in him pushing his cousin out of a treehouse, and his expulsion from his elementary school. Sam ends up having a seizure and his Mom flips the fuck out and takes him to a doctor for some sedatives, because yeah.. that’s whats wrong with your kid. I totally don’t get movies like this.. if my loved one was acting all fucked up, ranting about the devil and putting glass in my food, I would drive them to the looney bin so they could dry out for a while and not sit around all “ho hum, gosh I wonder whats wrong”.
Mom finally dumps the Babadook book in the trash and takes some of her crazy pills and tries to sleep, but soon ends up getting a visit from the Babadook, and she starts believing in his prescence and of course goes running to the cops, looking like Courtney Love fresh off a bender and ends up looking totally banana balls crazy.
During this time, she’s pulled her kid out school, or he was expelled for being creepy, whatever, and they both pretty much sit around at home fucked up on sedatives eating ice cream. That might not sound like much to you, my dear readers, but for some, this would be considered “living the dream”. That said though, she could at least watch something interesting on TV, not the fucked up all LSD channel she keeps tuning in to.
The Babadook book ends up finding its way back into the house and Mom becomes possessed, killing her dirty old dog and verbally abusing her son and staggering around like an old drunk. The kid ends up having a face off with his mother who keeps trying to kill him, and I guess all his monster fighting contraptions end up helping him because he beats the shit out of his Mom and ties her to the basement floor while she barfs up black vomit which is I guess Babadook juice? I have no idea. In between all of this neat black vomit, cordless phone diddling, there are points of boredom so heavy that the movie is practically unwatchable.. Just Mom staring at things, or interactions with neighbors that go on for way too fucking long. The issue that becomes fairly prevalent is that the Babadook is creepy, but the director isn’t sure how to feed that creepy to his audience in such a way that tension is not only built but kept. The periods of boredom which are meant to lull you into a sense of comfort before the next Bababdook creep incident, are simply boring rather than relaxing. The backstory of her husband dying is convenient rather than meaningful. She keeps going back to this point of grief with her husband’s death, and it seems so fresh.. once you find out that seven years have passed, it just seems really confusing. The elaboration into her tense family life, and her son’s inability to be normal seem forced rather than natural and I have a hard time believing in this family. The tragedy is laid on really thick to the point that its not really reality for me. This family lacks resiliency and rather than invoking sympathy, this lady and her creepy ass fucking kid just piss me off.
The lady ends up freaking the fuck out once the Babadook is no longer possessing her and she just yells at it to fuck off and it runs away into her basement and the final scene is of her and her kid gathering worms to feed the Babadook. She goes into the basement and feeds it, and though its obviously still pretty fearsome, she faces up to it and it eats its worms, because hey.. why not make this family more fucking creepy by adding an evil spirit living in the basement. That’s really gonna get you some dates, Amelia. Maybe the Babadook won’t judge you for watching old movies and diddling yourself with a fucking phone from 1998.
This flick reminded me a lot of Mama, and the Orphanage, but it really didn’t push the envelope for me enough. The concept of the Babadook was pretty creepy and I liked how it first began interacting with Amelia and her son, but any creepiness I felt was erased by the pointless story built up around this family that just ended up being a red herring. Where did the Babadook book come from? Who wrote it? Why do we give a shit about her fucking husband? The story telling was lazy and though it had a good foundation, it kinda went for a shit at the ending there. If the story was trying to say something deep about conquering our demons etc, horror isn’t really the genre, and specifically the little kid ghost movie creepy fairytale genre just doesn’t work for it. Mama and the Orphanage were more successful because at least, though the endings are somewhat called in, they spin it with that unhappy twist. In the Babadook, this nightmarish ghoul is reduced to a quivering monster by some lady telling it to fuck off and that didn’t really work for me. Had the Babadook eaten the kid, I would have likely had a different opinion.
This lady sucked and she and her creepy kid can fuck off. I also need to stop listening to other people who tell me movies are good because I usually end up disappointed. I saw a lot of buzz for this flick, and I don’t see how people were shitting themselves about this movie. I mean, it’s worth a watch, but I wouldn’t go out of my way for it.
So remember kids – if the boogeyman comes knocking, just tell him to fuck off and always stay spooky!
Holy shit. Thank you. This made this movie so much better after reading this. Just finished the movie then googled the Babadook what the fuck. This movie….jesus. Glad I’m not alone in this Babadook wtf-ery
A very good review, I kinda had the same thoughts while watching this movie. This could have been an awesome idea, but it was completly ruined, you just can´t identify with a person who had this much ( unrealistic ) drama in her life and is insane from the very start of the story.
There are some other reviews out there who call everything brilliant etc. I can´t identify with those people, like I can´t identify with this crazy ass mother in the movie.
This movie wasn’t about a monster. It was about a woman who was widowed on the day her son was born, had a crappy time raising him alone, got to a point where he was mentally screwed-up and fearing monsters enough to keep her awake and on edge, and so she has a NERVOUS BREAKDOWN. That’s the Babadook– Her nervous breakdown. She’s sleep-deprived, suffering survivor’s guilt, desperate for companionship, and stressed from raising a troubled child by herself. Her bitch sister doesn’t help matters much. All this comes to a head when she’s “possessed”, which is just shorthand for her freaking out.
The monster is in her head. The boy literally drives her crazy.
In the end, she is “feeding” it in the basement because it helps to manage not only her own mental problems (she goes in the basement and gets alone-time away from the kid) but it feeds the boy’s fantasies about the monster and placates him at the same time. He is an over-imaginative kid who needs to believe that the monster exists, so mom needs to pretend they have it locked up in the basement. It also keeps the boy OUT OF THE BASEMENT where she has her husband’s things.
This whole movie is just watching a widowed, stressed-out, single mom have a nervous breakdown.
It’s dull as shit.
I disagree, I think you missed a major point. She’s been driven crazy, and is grief stricken and mad. The babadook represents grief. The movie maker is trying to blur the line, and make you question if the babadook is even real. In the end, some people even still claim that it isn’t real. But whether the babadook is real or not isn’t the major point of the story. The point is that the babadook is a personification of her grief, anger, and regret. “Whether it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the babadook.” serves two purpouses. Yes, it’s a scary quote that implies the babadook is omnipotent and will never goes away, but it personifies what the babadook REALLY is (or perhaps feeds off), which is grief. She can’t get rid of the fact that her husband died. She can’t get rid of the fact that her skitzo kid survived. She can’t get rid of the demons living in her life. But she can acknowledge, control, and contain them. That’s why the babadook has to live in her basement. It’s still there, it’s still scary, and it’s still dangerous. But now, instead of saying “It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it isn’t real.” she’s in control.
Get it?
Possibly, but it doesn’t stop the movie from being a bore. Can’t explain that one away.