2014

A single mom in Australia has a 7 year old son, Sam, who is very concerned with magic and monster hunting. He also likes making and accumulating weapons to fight them, which includes a crossbow and catapult. Now, I fully understand the legend that everything in Australia is trying to kill you, but where the hell did this kid get a crossbow? And if he made it, get that kid to engineering school. Don’t punish him.

The kid is also very needy, because he knows his dad died driving his mom to the hospital when she was giving birth to Sam. He keeps making his mom promise him that she won’t die. If my kid ever said this to me, I’d be freaked out for a week. Sam is also the “weird kid” at school and even in his family. His aunt says she doesn’t want to baby-sit him anymore since he creeps her out, and won’t even let him have a joint birthday party with his cousin. I feel bad for this kid, especially when he bring his mom a book to read and inadvertently ends up inviting a demon into the house. Whoops.

The book is titled The Babadook and it features creepy cartoons that would make Tim Burton shudder. The book doesn’t really have an ending, more like a warning. The mom tears up the book, but it makes it back to her somehow. As her son continues to act more like a possessed child (more than usual, I presume) she decides to burn the book. This doesn’t help with anything, and as her insomnia gets worse, so do the noises in the house. She herself becomes possessed and starts treating her child like an annoying bug that must be crushed.

This of course bring about social services. Two agents are sent to her house to investigate and basically just discover that her taste in interior decorating may be contributing to this kids depression. And the fact that she can’t get over her dead husband and basically blames his death on her child. Social services don’t think that this 7-year postpartum depression is enough to take away the kid, which makes me think social services in Australia is just as underfunded as it is here. AustrailAmerica 4 Life!

As the movie goes on, the mom gets even crazier, as does her hair. Seriously, you can follow the level of possession by how bird’s nest-y her hair looks. I assume demons don’t own combs. She gets to the point where she almost murders her son in his sleep a few times. The kid is still relatively sane, and decides that his mom needs to be tied up in the basement until this thing passes. Unfortunately, not before she kills their puppy and pulls out her own tooth. This Babadook is another level.

While chained in the basement, she sees images of her dead husband and is finally bounced back to reality. Momma bear instincts finally come out and she roars back at the evilness, confining him to a small corner of her basement. And that’s pretty much it. They now have a pet Babadook that they feed worms to everyday. Australians, maybe everything is trying to kill you because you try to make everything a pet. Stop doing that. Get a hamster.