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Before there was ‘The Babadook,’ there was ‘Monster’ the ‘baby Babadook’
12.08.2014
01:01 pm
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There’s a reason why the critics and all your friends who’ve seen it are raving about the new horror movie, The Babadook: It’s because it’s really well-done and fucking scary. For the most part, I find horror films extremely uninteresting, but this one, about a young boy with a pop-up book from Hell, grabbed me immediately with its stylish sense of anxiety, claustrophobia and unease. It’s genuinely frightening and it doesn’t rely on the cliched tropes of “found video” that’s been getting old since The Blair Witch Project or sudden loud noises for its scares.

The 2014 Australian indie horror, written and directed by Jennifer Kent has a nearly perfect rating on Rotten Tomatoes and currently has a score of 87 out of 100 on Metacritic, which seems about right. Last week William Friedkin director of The Exorcist tweeted “Psycho, Alien, Diabolique, and now THE BABADOOK” adding “I’ve never seen a more terrifying film than THE BABADOOK. It will scare the hell out of you as it did me.” Stephen King tweeted “Deeply disturbing and highly recommended. You don’t watch it so much as experience it.” If you won’t take my word for it, take theirs.
 

 
The Babadook inhabits a place where the Zuni devil doll from Trilogy of Terror meets Roman Polanski’s The Tenant meets Mommy Dearest meets David Lynch meets Mark Z. Danielewski’s House of Leaves meets Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages meets Georges Méliès meets… Papa Lazarou from League of Gentlemen? I think you’ll know from that mouthful of a sentence whether or not The Babadook is the film for you. Six-year-old Noah Wiseman is a revelation in his role as the difficult son of an emotionally disturbed single mother and Essie Davis, as his mom, is simply terrific. Surely she’s going to find doors opening up to her in Hollywood, she’s great in this. It’s basically the two of them who carry the entire film.
 

 
I’m not going to spill any of the beans, it’s best to see it without knowing much more than this. What I do want to point out is that The Babadook‘s critically-lauded first time feature director Jennifer Kent, who did an apprenticeship with Danish director Lars von Trier on the set of his Dogville, made a short predecessor to The Babadook in 2005 called “Monster” which she refers to as a “baby Babadook.”
 

 
After the jump, ‘The Babadook’ trailer…

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Posted by Richard Metzger
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12.08.2014
01:01 pm
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