“The Babadook” is the kind of horror film in which a family is tormented by some sort of supernatural being, like a haunting kind of deal, but with the added benefit of the horror being directly tied into the emotional needs of the main characters and their relationship to each other. So there is some scary stuff about monsters in the shadows, but then there are also the monsters inside of us as well, ooooooooo, get it? The real monsters?

Amelia (Essie Davis) is a single working mom, and she is single because her husband died in a car accident on their way to the hospital, which they were heading to so she could give birth to her son Sam. And as they approach Sam’s seventh birthday, Amelia is reminded again of her dead husband. What a bummer. Meanwhile, Sam has been acting out more and more, scared of possible monsters under his bed and in his closet, and feeling more and more isolated from his schoolmates, and his tantrums and seemingly paranoid fixations are just weighing down on Amelia more and more. Her personal life, what little of it she has, is a wreck, her son is off his rocker, and she struggles to even get some decent sleep. And just as all of this is going down, a mysterious book enters their lives.

Having a nightly habit of reading a book to her son before he goes to bed, one night he pulls a red book off the shelf called “Mister Babadook” and it is a short pop-up book about a ghostly creature thing trying to come into a home to be all scary and stuff and how you can’t get rid of him, and the art and the wording freaks out Amelia as well as Sam, who then starts believing that the Babadook is in their house trying to get them. Well, really trying to get Amelia, which makes Sam scared because he wants to protect her. And Amelia doesn’t believe him at first, but then weird things start happening around her, and before long, shit really starts to go crazy for her.Continue Reading …