Things that go bump in the night

Abstract

It's rare that a horror film captures the critical attention that The Babadook has. After the 2014 Sundance Film Festival, this small-budget Australian horror movie generated word-of-mouth praise seldom received by films in this downmarket, critically reviled genre. Yet it amply earns its praise, by using the trappings and conventions of horror films to tell a much more sensitive and nuanced story beyond the usual fare of jump scares, chainsaws, and gore. Which is not to say that the film isn't frightening. In fact, it is one of the scariest films I've seen in a theatre, one that stuck with me long after the lights had come on. What makes director Jennifer Kent's debut feature such a success is the way that it succeeds as a horror film, while also embracing an emotional subtlety that few films of this genre (or any other) attempt. The film centres around a widowed mother, Essie Davis, and her young son. After the death of her husband in a car crash, Davis' withdrawn nature has isolated her from her family and other support networks, and her son's behaviour has caused trouble at home and at school. When he brings home a strange new book about Mr Babadook, she is concerned about her son's reaction to the unsettling story. Kent excels in depicting Davis' home in the film, establishing a layout that creates a subtle pressure on the viewer without beating you over the head with it. There's a constant sense of tension that comes from Kent's use of negative space, a sensation that something should be standing there, but isn't. It's a subtle effect, and very well deployed. Another of Kent's tricks that might go unnoticed at first is secretly the film's strongest point: the sound design. The home is full of strange hums and ticks, and the ambient soundtrack of the film creates a delicious tension in the viewer. The first films of early cinema were thuddingly realistic affairs, documentary clips of people walking, steam trains, and other ephemera of everyday life; it took decades for filmmakers to develop an audiovisual vocabulary to depict the inner lives of their characters. Kent is not the first filmmaker to use horror as a tool to examine at the emotional state of a character, but few have done it with the grace and assuredness that she displays here. In every way, The Babadook is film-making at its finest. The Babadook Directed by Jennifer Kent Running time: 93 min