A single mother reads her troubled son a bedtime story from a mysterious pop-up book one night. It warns of a malevolent ghoul that wants to come out of the darkness and kill people... From there, the kid starts seeing the Babadook every night, which takes it's toll on his disbelieving mother's psyche since neither of them are able to get any sleep. Eventually, the Babadook does his 'thing' and the movie goes downhill...
Obviously, the plot is nothing even remotely original. However, what I kinda appreciated about this one was how it relied on a more human element then just predictable jump-scares and hackneyed supernatural-horror formalities... That is... up until the final act when they decided to pile on every derivative genre custom they could muster up and went the typical 'possession' route that is so fucking popular these days. It's a shame, cuz I found the film relatively engaging in how it tended to commit, predominantly, to a more psychological basis for it's majority - as opposed to just "spooky" shadows and doors slamming on their own. That's a good thing, because the Babadook 'entity' is stupid and boring looking and has one of the dumbest names ever. Seriously, the title of this movie makes me cringe every time someone says it out loud. So, focusing on the characters - namely the mother - coming apart at the seams due to a lack of sleep and thinking her child is a complete basket case put a decent enough 'spin' on this flick -sort of reminiscent of "The Shining" in some ways. But then it just ends in your standard, obnoxious, overblown, dull way, which pretty much killed it for me. I hate when that happens... Oh well. Don't believe the hype...
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