Medium: Movie
Runtime: 1hr, 33 Minutes
Genre: Horror
So after the disappointing false start that was Pitch Black, I decided to hit something I KNEW would be creepy.
Being out of town for a wedding, I don't have access to the stack of DVDs I've been working through. Fortunately, this isn't an issue, because I still have an intimidatingly large Netflix queue. And on this queue is something I've heard wonderful things about...
Our story begins with a mother and her young child, the latter of whom is kind of a handful. Sam is a spirited and inventive boy, but the way his mind works tends to get him in trouble. He's scared of monsters, so he builds real working weapons to fight against them, and he sees absolutely nothing wrong with telling others that his father died in a car wreck while trying to drive his pregnant mother to the hospital for delivery. This often leaves his mother Amelia to rush in to deflect or apologize for situations he's caused, sometimes having to leave work to resolve the issue.
Their lives recieve a sour one-two punch after Sam brings a crossbow to school (which yes, he built himself), and Amelia ends up pulling him out amidst the principal and teacher's concerns that he's a danger to himself and others. Then, later that night for his bedtime story, he pulls a pop-up book from the shelf that neither of them had seen before, which turns out to be about a sinister monster called Mister Babadook. Amelia is rattled by the morbid, threatening contents of the book, but Sam is reduced to sobbing. Of course, shortly thereafter it starts coming true, page by page. This is a horror movie, after all...
Right away I must say that the visual design is great. The scenes in Amelia's house are full of muted colors and darkness to signify the oppressively stressful atmosphere that hangs over thier heads, while the nursing home is full of pleasant pastels. One scene partway in has Sam attending a birthday party, and everything there seems either washed out or too bright- it gives the place an unpleasant atmosphere, but in a much different way than Amelia's home.
Amelia is solid- you can tell that she loves her son dearly but the antics he gets up to tend to wreak havoc on her relationships and her blood pressure, and with the menacing goings-on she can't quite tell if she's finally cracked and starting to hallucinate or if one of the monsters that Sam's so obsessed with really has come to get them.
On the other hand, Sam's character seems... hit or miss. He swings between charming kid and unholy terror with such unpredictability that I don't just wonder if he's got some undiagnosed disorder. On the plus side though, some of his best scenes are when everything is falling apart- watching his mother buckling under the stress of their situation, Sam shows genuine concern at her increasingly erratic behavior and starts trying to figure out ways to help (which ironically make her temperment worse, as they often involve doing things she has told him repeatedly not to do).
Then there's Mister Babadook himself. I maintain that the best movie monsters are the ones that never play their hand too early or too often- the less you see of them, the less comfortable you are when they do show up. And the less you know about them, the more genuinely dangerous the situation feels when they do enter the picture. To that end, his appearances are sprinkled just enough throughout to keep up an air of supernatural menace without ever feeling stale, and we never really do get a good look at him. Most of what we do see is obscured by darkness, and the rest comes in the form of the pop-up book.
Speaking of which, I do have questions about where the book came from in the first place- aside from the monster's status as a (possible) metaphor for grief/depression/whatever else it could be said to represent, there's no real explanation for why Mister Babadook's autobiography happened to be sitting on the shelf with the other storytime books. I'd have even accepted a little scene where, say, we look away from the shelf and then look back and it's just there now, but no- Sam just grabs the book out from between a couple others with the exact same color binding, and I'm not even sure he was paying attention to which one it was.
Maybe it's because I watched it during the day (in as dark a room as I could manage), maybe it's due to the constant, erratic banging of hammers as people work on the roof here, or maybe I'm just desensitized to creepy, but for some reason I just couldn't... get into it. The movie gave me one really good chill down my spine, and some of the imagery (particularly concerning the monster) was neat, but that was it. There's an appreciable lack of jumpscares, but maybe they could have done with one or two just to keep the audience shaken up. It's worth a watch, anyway, so try it out.
TL;DR: Pretty okay overall, but it just never hit me.
VIRTUES: Well acted and directed, great use of color and light/darkness, nicely creepy imagery.
SINS: Sam's screaming during his tantrums is realistically, obnoxiously ear-splitting, and watching Amelia slinging barbs at her kid is also pretty off-putting.
GRADE: C+
Runtime: 1hr, 33 Minutes
Genre: Horror
So after the disappointing false start that was Pitch Black, I decided to hit something I KNEW would be creepy.
Being out of town for a wedding, I don't have access to the stack of DVDs I've been working through. Fortunately, this isn't an issue, because I still have an intimidatingly large Netflix queue. And on this queue is something I've heard wonderful things about...
 |
| if it's in a word or it's in a look... |
Their lives recieve a sour one-two punch after Sam brings a crossbow to school (which yes, he built himself), and Amelia ends up pulling him out amidst the principal and teacher's concerns that he's a danger to himself and others. Then, later that night for his bedtime story, he pulls a pop-up book from the shelf that neither of them had seen before, which turns out to be about a sinister monster called Mister Babadook. Amelia is rattled by the morbid, threatening contents of the book, but Sam is reduced to sobbing. Of course, shortly thereafter it starts coming true, page by page. This is a horror movie, after all...
Right away I must say that the visual design is great. The scenes in Amelia's house are full of muted colors and darkness to signify the oppressively stressful atmosphere that hangs over thier heads, while the nursing home is full of pleasant pastels. One scene partway in has Sam attending a birthday party, and everything there seems either washed out or too bright- it gives the place an unpleasant atmosphere, but in a much different way than Amelia's home.
Amelia is solid- you can tell that she loves her son dearly but the antics he gets up to tend to wreak havoc on her relationships and her blood pressure, and with the menacing goings-on she can't quite tell if she's finally cracked and starting to hallucinate or if one of the monsters that Sam's so obsessed with really has come to get them.
On the other hand, Sam's character seems... hit or miss. He swings between charming kid and unholy terror with such unpredictability that I don't just wonder if he's got some undiagnosed disorder. On the plus side though, some of his best scenes are when everything is falling apart- watching his mother buckling under the stress of their situation, Sam shows genuine concern at her increasingly erratic behavior and starts trying to figure out ways to help (which ironically make her temperment worse, as they often involve doing things she has told him repeatedly not to do).
Then there's Mister Babadook himself. I maintain that the best movie monsters are the ones that never play their hand too early or too often- the less you see of them, the less comfortable you are when they do show up. And the less you know about them, the more genuinely dangerous the situation feels when they do enter the picture. To that end, his appearances are sprinkled just enough throughout to keep up an air of supernatural menace without ever feeling stale, and we never really do get a good look at him. Most of what we do see is obscured by darkness, and the rest comes in the form of the pop-up book.
 |
| Swank hat.. but no. |
Maybe it's because I watched it during the day (in as dark a room as I could manage), maybe it's due to the constant, erratic banging of hammers as people work on the roof here, or maybe I'm just desensitized to creepy, but for some reason I just couldn't... get into it. The movie gave me one really good chill down my spine, and some of the imagery (particularly concerning the monster) was neat, but that was it. There's an appreciable lack of jumpscares, but maybe they could have done with one or two just to keep the audience shaken up. It's worth a watch, anyway, so try it out.
TL;DR: Pretty okay overall, but it just never hit me.
VIRTUES: Well acted and directed, great use of color and light/darkness, nicely creepy imagery.
SINS: Sam's screaming during his tantrums is realistically, obnoxiously ear-splitting, and watching Amelia slinging barbs at her kid is also pretty off-putting.
GRADE: C+
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