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The Babadook
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
Final Verdict: [Just... Bad]
The Babadook
Horror / English / 2014
WHY'D I WATCH IT?
If there were two critical favorites in the horror movie genre in 2014 they were It Follows and The Babadook, with The Babadook represented as the indie film here to take the horror genre back to basics and prove just how scary you can be without constant jumpscares or explicitly revealing the monster. I wasn't looking forward to this movie largely because I don't like horror movies as a general rule, but I felt I ought to give it a try.
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
WHAT'D I THINK? *SPOILERS*
The Babadook is a truly remarkable movie, in that I don't think I've ever seen a movie in which one of the protagonists is scarier than the monster itself.
Take a look at this child. Just IMAGINE the sheer pants-****ting horror of sitting in the same vehicle as this little piece of ****. Screaming, kicking the back of your seat, would you believe me if I told you this elementary schooler is ****ing ARMED?
Yeah, apparently this kid puts Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone to absolute shame for the amount of weapon engineering he's mastered in his single-digit years on earth. He personally built a shoulder catapult, owns a literal crossbow, and has the inexplicable ability to acquire white doves and explosives offscreen. He disrupts his classes, he breaks the noses of neighbor kids, and he disobeys his mother on a regular basis because she's just a massive ****ing floormat.
The basic premise here is Single Mom and Child From Hell discover a mysterious book which essentially threatens it's readers with vivid horrific popouts and descriptions of what The Babadook will do to you, and sure enough after reading the book it begins to haunt their home to harass them. It's decently creepy for maybe half the movie until it's "revealed" to be a solid black stop-motion paper thing that makes generic stock monster sounds before outright possessing Single Mom, totally eradicating any tension the movie had because now your villain is front and center on the screen in bright light.
Not only that, but it's a breath of relief when The Babadook turns her into a sour bitch that isn't afraid to verbally abuse her ****awful son. Granted, she snaps the dog's neck (sorry, DoesTheDogDie.com, that would be a confirmation), but that's about all she does before her kid inexplicably traps her in the basement, frees her, and after some totally vacuous showdown her son is "reformed" only to saddle her with another uncooperative screaming monster of a child, The Babadook, in her basement.
Well that's just swell. This really does seem like you've worked through your problems for no reason whatsoever.
"People don't like me cause I'm weird."
"Sometimes people say things that aren't true."
No, Mom, stop treating him like a special ****in' snowflake and tell that little **** that he IS weird, he's a violent little troll that got kicked out of school by his own ****in' fault, all your friends hate his scheevy little guts, and he's got no friends because he's an annoying little ****bag who nobody wants to spend time with for good ****in' reason. Stop reading him books, stop stuffing him full of ice cream, and stop apologizing for him, BE A PARENT, put your foot down, or shove it up his ass, whichever keeps him from putting glass in your food and breaking other childrens' noses.
This movie's pretty cliche too, I mean seriously, you're gonna give us the whole doubletake-cause-you-see-something-in-the-background-but-it's-gone-now-oh-well-let's-forget-that-happened schtick? Shove off.
The best thing about this movie is the creepy art in The Babadook book, and that's not worth the price of admission.
Take a look at this child. Just IMAGINE the sheer pants-****ting horror of sitting in the same vehicle as this little piece of ****. Screaming, kicking the back of your seat, would you believe me if I told you this elementary schooler is ****ing ARMED?
Yeah, apparently this kid puts Macaulay Culkin from Home Alone to absolute shame for the amount of weapon engineering he's mastered in his single-digit years on earth. He personally built a shoulder catapult, owns a literal crossbow, and has the inexplicable ability to acquire white doves and explosives offscreen. He disrupts his classes, he breaks the noses of neighbor kids, and he disobeys his mother on a regular basis because she's just a massive ****ing floormat.
The basic premise here is Single Mom and Child From Hell discover a mysterious book which essentially threatens it's readers with vivid horrific popouts and descriptions of what The Babadook will do to you, and sure enough after reading the book it begins to haunt their home to harass them. It's decently creepy for maybe half the movie until it's "revealed" to be a solid black stop-motion paper thing that makes generic stock monster sounds before outright possessing Single Mom, totally eradicating any tension the movie had because now your villain is front and center on the screen in bright light.
Not only that, but it's a breath of relief when The Babadook turns her into a sour bitch that isn't afraid to verbally abuse her ****awful son. Granted, she snaps the dog's neck (sorry, DoesTheDogDie.com, that would be a confirmation), but that's about all she does before her kid inexplicably traps her in the basement, frees her, and after some totally vacuous showdown her son is "reformed" only to saddle her with another uncooperative screaming monster of a child, The Babadook, in her basement.
Well that's just swell. This really does seem like you've worked through your problems for no reason whatsoever.
"People don't like me cause I'm weird."
"Sometimes people say things that aren't true."
No, Mom, stop treating him like a special ****in' snowflake and tell that little **** that he IS weird, he's a violent little troll that got kicked out of school by his own ****in' fault, all your friends hate his scheevy little guts, and he's got no friends because he's an annoying little ****bag who nobody wants to spend time with for good ****in' reason. Stop reading him books, stop stuffing him full of ice cream, and stop apologizing for him, BE A PARENT, put your foot down, or shove it up his ass, whichever keeps him from putting glass in your food and breaking other childrens' noses.
This movie's pretty cliche too, I mean seriously, you're gonna give us the whole doubletake-cause-you-see-something-in-the-background-but-it's-gone-now-oh-well-let's-forget-that-happened schtick? Shove off.
The best thing about this movie is the creepy art in The Babadook book, and that's not worth the price of admission.