I for one love it, and one of my favorite things about it is how it's duality leaves the fans not knowing exactly what to think in the end.
The movie starts with an overly tired and grieving widow(played magnificently by Essie Davis) who takers care of their son Sam, after her husband died in a car accident while driving her to the hospital.
There we are introduced to Sam. A child who in the first part of the movie I wanted the Babadook to eat it and take it away. The kid actor is fantastic and the idea behind it was to show what kind of stress level his mother was dealing with, as well as Sam's inability to deal with his father's death, causing him to have all kinds of behavior issues and ends up being kicked out of school.
That's when the movie really begins, Amelia finds an odd book in the shelf and reads it to Sam, The book is called "The Babadook" and once the book is read, the creature apparently come to life.
In a very "childs play" fashion, Sam starts being involved in odd acts and attributes them to The Babadook, causing Amelia to rip the book into shreds and burn it. Next day, during a birthay party with the worst family members ever, the worst cousin on earth makes fun of Sam for not having a father and gets a well deserved punch in the nose, (she deserved it.. babadook or not), on the way out of the party, Sam has some sort of seizure and Amelia asks the doctor to prescribe Sam some medications to allow him to rest.
The very next day, the damned book is sitting in front of her door and for me at least that's when the story takes place. Not until that moment, when she walks into the police station and says out loud everything that has happened to her, we realize how crazy it all sounds. And that night, Amelia is finally visited by the Babadook who "possesses" her.
Then we go straight Shining, as Amelia kills their dog as predicted by the book, then proceeds to try to Kill Sam who stabs his mom in the leg, causing her to "fight the creature" and throw up black goo.
They win in the end after Amelia yells at the Babadook that they are no longer scared and in the end, at Sams birthday party, we see that Amelia kept the Babadook as a pet and feeds him worms.
A lot of people see this as a monster movie, but I saw it as a film about a woman dealing with depression. There was never a Babadook, Amelia always resented her son for being the "cause" of his father's death, her hallucinations came from lack of sleep and in the end, she created the storybook to cope with her own dark thoughts of murdering her child, but when confronted with the reality of she was about to do Amelia fought against her illness and kept that dark side of her locked away, but in control
I thought it was a masterfully done movie, the use of the cartoons and practical effects were very well done. They had a sizable budget for a low budget feature with a 2 million dollar price tag, and part of that was crowdfunded. Then they won the grail of independent features at Sundance and the rest is history.
I recommend it for anyone to give it a shot
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