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 Welcome to the Movie of the Month revival! Hopefully other people will help carry this on in future months, but hey, at worst we can talk about a pretty great film until February. The Babadook, Jennifer Kent's 2014 directorial debut, is one of my favorite films of the past few years. Starring Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman as a widowed mother and her son, who become victimized by the titular Mister Babadook after reading his book, the film is less of a monster movie than the advertising and title might lead on; while the Babadook is a consistent presence in the film, it's only as an externalization of the psychological drama that's the true core of the film. In its examination of the mental effects and toll of parenthood, there's a kinship between the film and Eraserhead, though The Babadook is at least more hopeful about it than Eraserhead.  It does have a more annoying kid, though. There's a lot of interesting stuff going on in The Babadook beyond just the surface parental drama, and I've got more thoughts of my own I'll get around to posting up later, but for now, let's all just greet our new special friend!  I will never stop finding this really cute. The Babadook is available for viewing on Netflix Instant, for rental through Amazon Video, and for digital purchase through iTunes. If you have Hulu, I'm sorry for your poor life choices. The Complete Movie of the Month Listing: 1776 | 2001: A Space Odyssey | 24 Hour Party People | 8 1/2 | The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension | Aguirre: The Wrath of God | All That Jazz | American Movie | A Midnight Clear | Baraka | The Battle of Algiers | Being There | Beyond the Valley of the Dolls | Bicycle Thief | Black Hawk Down | Blade | Branded to Kill | The Brave Little Toaster | Breaking Away | The Bridge on the River Kwai | Brief Encounter | Bullet in the Head | Charade | Chitty Chitty Bang Bang | Close-Up | The Conversation | The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover | Day For Night | The Court Jester | Death Race 2000 | Dead Man | Darkman | Detour | Devils on the Doorstep | Do the Right Thing | Double Indemnity | Downfall | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde | El Topo | Falling Down | A Face In The Crowd | Fanny and Alexander | Fat City | Funny Bones | Galaxy Quest | Ghost Dog: Way of the Samurai | Glengarry Glen Ross | Gremlins 2: The New Batch | Horor of Dracula | La Haine | The Ice Storm | The Intruder | It's a Wonderful Life | Judgement at Nuremberg | Jumanji | The King of Comedy | Last Train From Gun Hill | The Leopard | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | Little Shop of Horrors | Living in Oblivion | The Long Goodbye | Love & Death | M | Masculin Féminin | Man on Fire | The Man Who Would Be King | Modern Times | The Monster Squad | Mousehunt | Mulholland Drive | My Best Friend's Wedding | My Darling Clementine | My Own Private Idaho | Naked | Outland | The Panic in Needle Park | Peeping Tom | Planes, Trains, and Automobiles | Play Time | The Proposition | Punishment Park | The Pusher Trilogy | Rififi/Rashômon | The Ref | Rock 'n' Roll High School | Ronin | The Rules of the Game | Safe | Schizopolis | Son of Frankenstein | The Squid and the Whale | Stop Making Sense | The Super Inframan | Sunset Boulevard | Surviving The Game | The Sweet Hereafter | The Third Man | Titicut Follies | Vampyr | The Vanishing | Videodrome | The Wild Bunch | Wit | Withnail & I | The Young Girls of Rochefort | Zardoz RandallODim fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jan 3, 2016 |
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Jan 3, 2016 05:56
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So I saw this movie for the first time last October during the Scream Stream (tm), and it was one of the favorites of the year. There was a lot of discussion about if the film is a metaphor for mental illness or for grief, and I'm curious to see what people viewing it for the first time will think.
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Jan 3, 2016 06:40
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I really like the Babadook. It's centered around family and mental health issues like The Exorcist, but it's also got a flair for the wild like Wes Craven (even borrowing some ideas from New Nightmare) but it feels fresh and new. Excellent choice for the revival.
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Jan 3, 2016 06:45
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Great film! The acting from the kid was pretty great considering he's a child actor. I also liked the way that they play it up as him being a little monster.
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Jan 3, 2016 16:09
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I enjoyed this. The babadook is scary as hell. Even just that loving book on its own is something that shouldn't happen to anyone. I'm not sure how I feel about the kid's monster hunter hobby, though. Is the payoff to that just the fact that he puts up more of a fight at the end? I feel like any other horror movie would just have him Home Aloneing it up all the same without warning, and I'm not sure that would have been a problem.
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Jan 4, 2016 14:10
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This may sound like an odd question, but what are your opinions on this movie for a 12-year old? My kid is super into scary stuff, and I'm okay with that. We've watched just about every PG-13 horror movie I can find on Netflix, but there aren't many. Most are 80s horror/comedies, like Gremlins. Nevertheless, he's loved every one, and it's prompted some really cool discussions about the themes of the movies. We had a great discussion of the afterlife after The Sixth Sense, for example. (I know 6th Sense isn't all that scary in the grand scheme of things, just an example.) He's pushing to watch scarier stuff, and I'm starting to think he's mature enough for some of the lighter R-rated stuff. My big hesitance is that many horror movies delve a bit too deep into extreme, realistic violence, body horror, and/or explicit sexuality than I'm comfortable with yet. To give you an idea of the approximate level of movie I'm considering, I think he's really close to being ready for The Thing (1982 version), but isn't ready for Alien. Shaun of the Dead is another I'm considering showing him. About where would Babadook fall on this scale?
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Jan 5, 2016 05:01
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There isn't a lot of gore or sexuality in the film. But I'm still not sure a 12 year old is the appropriate audience for something with such heavy adult ideas.
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Jan 5, 2016 05:39
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Shanty posted:I enjoyed this. The babadook is scary as hell. Even just that loving book on its own is something that shouldn't happen to anyone. I'm not sure how I feel about the kid's monster hunter hobby, though. Is the payoff to that just the fact that he puts up more of a fight at the end? I feel like any other horror movie would just have him Home Aloneing it up all the same without warning, and I'm not sure that would have been a problem. I thought his whole "monster fighting" thing was pretty sad, in the context of the "monsters" being unresolved grief / an inability to acknowledge the past. He and his mother are essentially trying to protect each other from each other. One of the things I really like about this movie is that you can take the actual babadook out of it completely and it's still an effective piece of psychological horror; you can read the babadook as only being an artistic externalization of the mother's sadness / resentment. The great horror monsters are highly allegorical almost as a rule, but this movie takes it even further.
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Jan 5, 2016 05:52
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Lurdiak posted:There isn't a lot of gore or sexuality in the film. But I'm still not sure a 12 year old is the appropriate audience for something with such heavy adult ideas. Yeah, the most explicit it gets is a scene where Amelia starts trying to masturbate in bed before she's interrupted by Sam being scared of monsters. I'd second that it's thematically pretty heavy for a 12-year-old viewer, though; it isn't as violent as The Thing or Alien, but it definitely has a similar level of 'mature' material as Alien. Shaun of the Dead is a good idea for 12-year-old appropriate R-rated horror, though. Pretty sure I was that old when I saw it for the first time, too, and looking back I think that's a fine age for seeing it. Grizzled Patriarch posted:One of the things I really like about this movie is that you can take the actual babadook out of it completely and it's still an effective piece of psychological horror; you can read the babadook as only being an artistic externalization of the mother's sadness / resentment. The great horror monsters are highly allegorical almost as a rule, but this movie takes it even further. Yeah, that's one of my favorite things about The Babadook. As you pointed out, it's a step beyond even the allegorical nature of most horror, to the point where it almost feels diegetically symbolic. The fact that you could just cut the Babadook out entirely and basically have a psychological family drama film is similarly pretty cool, and I'd say evidence of the quality of the film itself.
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Jan 5, 2016 07:23
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Thanks for the feedback, guys!
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Jan 5, 2016 20:20
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Something I love about this film is how it can be read in multiple ways that _complement_ rather than forcing you to choose. I read the movie as a metaphor for two things: (1) grief, of course, and (2) raising a special-needs child. To explain the second: It was very easy for me to imagine an aspect of the film, from the mother's POV, as: "Oh God—my son will never mature or live a normal life or get along in normal society or be independent if this doesn't stop; I'm going to have to put his needs front and center for the rest of my life and I don't know what he'll do when I'm gone." Perhaps this is a sensitive issue for me because I know a set of parents who face such a struggle—not that their kid is quite as much a handful as the one in this movie, but the point is, they have had to structure aspects of their life entirely around their kid's unique needs in a way they didn't have to for their other children, and it's been that way since the word go.
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Jan 7, 2016 22:49
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Man this is really a great movie. In a way it kind of strangely reminds me of Carpenter's The Thing in the way it seems the characters are almost completely isolated and dealing with this weird, half-seen threat they don't really understand or believe in for such a long time. Both the mother and the kid give really outstanding performances, more than once I wanted to pull the mom out of the screen and give her a hug and some hot tea, she honestly does seem to be completely coming apart at times. Do you think this movie has a happy ending? The person I watched the movie with thought it did, as the child wasn't sacrificed to the Babadook and at the end it seems like she and her son are finally getting along, but I thought it had a much darker ending. Rather than accepting and really dealing with their pain and grief (the Babadook) and finally letting it go they instead just screamed at it until it cowered and kept it locked up down in the dark, and then the two of them together began regularly feeding it, which is not the way to get over pain like that and IMO pretty much guarantees it's just going to grow and fester until eventually it becomes strong enough to break out of its captivity and hurt them all over again. Thoughts?
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Jan 9, 2016 17:33
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JonathonSpectre posted:Man this is really a great movie. In a way it kind of strangely reminds me of Carpenter's The Thing in the way it seems the characters are almost completely isolated and dealing with this weird, half-seen threat they don't really understand or believe in for such a long time. Both the mother and the kid give really outstanding performances, more than once I wanted to pull the mom out of the screen and give her a hug and some hot tea, she honestly does seem to be completely coming apart at times. I think it's about as happy an ending as you can get. The Babadook, much like the grief and trauma of a loved one dying, can never truly go away, they just have to learn to accept it and deal with it in a healthy way. Which isn't to say it's actually a happy ending, but it could have been a whole lot worse.
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Jan 9, 2016 17:53
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One of those movies I get, and think "I appreciate the angle you've taken on this" but goddamn if I didn't hate pretty much every second of. I'm used to not enjoying modern horror that is highly praised though, it's a drat curse.
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Jan 15, 2016 00:40
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EL BROMANCE posted:One of those movies I get, and think "I appreciate the angle you've taken on this" but goddamn if I didn't hate pretty much every second of. I'm used to not enjoying modern horror that is highly praised though, it's a drat curse. What particularly didn't you like about it? I'm interested in people criticisms of the movie as much as praise.
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Jan 18, 2016 02:36
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RandallODim posted:What particularly didn't you like about it? I'm interested in people criticisms of the movie as much as praise. I really liked the movie itself, but I just didn't care for the ending. I just didn't like The Babadook being an actual thing, and felt it would have been better had it been purely a mental breakdown
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Jan 18, 2016 14:43
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Iron Crowned posted:I really liked the movie itself, but I just didn't care for the ending. I just didn't like The Babadook being an actual thing, and felt it would have been better had it been purely a mental breakdown I don't really think there's anything preventing the latter reading. Amelia is clearly seeing things that aren't there.
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Jan 18, 2016 17:59
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Did that real-life book ever come out? Wasn't it supposed to have scenes that weren't in the movie? I'd love to see those.
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Jan 20, 2016 17:55
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RandallODim posted:What particularly didn't you like about it? I'm interested in people criticisms of the movie as much as praise. I wish I'd written a review, as it's been about a year or so so the specifics have faded in my memory (I'm like a goldfish, I swear). Like another poster mentioned, the ending didn't do it for me... It clung on waaaay too hard to the metaphor for my liking. The kid really, really bugged the crap out of me - which I understand is a purposeful part of it, as it's the diversion and a good chunk of the real issue, but he was unbearable. Reminded me too much of a kid I know in real life for my liking! I didn't find it the least bit scary, which is something I find with a lot of modern horror and if a film is supposed to give me the chills and doesn't - it's failing to do its job. I really liked It Follows for the sole reason I had that feeling of terror and dread come over me several times in the first hour. After watching Babadook I was like "ok I get what they were going for, and it was a smarter take that it looked like to begins with, but I found the actual watching of it unpleasant". It's the kind of film that I might like more on a second viewing, but have no desire to see again.
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Jan 22, 2016 00:53
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I'm in the small but significant camp that utterly loved the movie except for the one time they use that one sound effect when the Babadook is manifesting itself. It was a very dramatic scene, too. Why did they have to use that one specific stock sound??
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Jan 22, 2016 06:43
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"The Babadook will eat your mom for breakfast!" Definitely saw direct references to The Shining, A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984), The Sixth Sense, The Cell, Poltergeist, Poltergeist II: The Other Side and others. But the core of the story reminded me most of The Entity (1982) which features another single adult woman being tormented. I liked the look of the pop-up book and how it worked although I felt it spoiled the story somewhat. Unfortunately I'm pretty desensitized to these kinds of films that go bump in the night and/or hide under the bed. So a scarecrow slithering around in a grim reaper suit doesn't do as much for me as it once would have. I've dealt with Babadook's in my life (figuratively and literally) and if I encountered a Babadook apparition it'd probably look more like a demonic alien wearing a spacesuit rather than a deranged magician wearing a top hat. The humor sticks out more (Babadook's raspy phone calls in particular). The theme to the film is legitimately great IMO. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tq20jvqA8 I think suggestible younglings will like it fine. You know, the type that worships The Slender Man.
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Jan 22, 2016 07:12
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i found myself really enjoying the film. i have this habit of watching horror movies sort of as presented and not really delving too deeply into the metaphorical aspects of them. its not that i don't appreciate the subtext i just find its just that you can either take whats on screen as whats happening or invent your own subjective story. that way it could be about grief or some emotional trauma or a shared psychological state or its just a supernatural event. i really liked the ending. i liked the less is more approach too. i liked the kids little home alone traps to attempt to protect himself and i really enjoy the "weird" and just "offish" sort of atmosphere throughout the film. its really well acted and i really felt sorry for the mother who looked and seemed so sleep deprived and emotionally drained at times. its a good movie.
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Jan 23, 2016 21:22
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