Overview
Amelia (Essie Davis), the heroine of Jennifer Kent's horror movie THE BABADOOK, is an Australian single mother haunted by memories of her late husband's tragic death. He was in the midst of taking his very pregnant wife to the delivery room when the couple had a devastating car wreck. Mother and baby were saved; dad perished. That was six years ago. Now, as the story opens, Amelia is raising her young son Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a sweet-natured but very precocious and troubled little boy. On a nightly basis, Samuel grows convinced that monsters lurk beneath his bed, and he has even constructed homemade weapons, such as a miniature wooden catapult and crossbow, to fend off the invading enemies. His eccentric behavior alienates his schoolteachers, who insist on removing him from a group setting in the classroom in favor of a special-needs situation with a one-on-one tutor. Meanwhile, Samuel's conduct stresses Amelia to the breaking point. The situation at home grows much more bizarre when Samuel asks his mom to read to him, and produces a strange children's storybook from his bedroom shelf. Entitled "The Babadook," it's an eerie pop-up book with charcoal illustrations of a demonic figure that announces itself by knocking at the door of a house six times ("Ba-ba-ba-DOOK-DOOK-DOOK"), and then devours all who reside within. Neither Amelia nor Samuel have ever seen this volume before, nor do they know how it turned up in their home. Stranger still, it lacks an author and publishing information. The book instantly has Samuel in tears, and Amelia plans to dispose of it, but that same night, six knocks sound on the door and rattle the house...
Awards:
Main Cast & Crew:
Jennifer Kent - Director
Essie Davis
Hayley McElhinney
Daniel Henshall
Barbara West
Bridget Walters
Details
- Format: DVD
- Run Time: 93
- UPC: 826663157734
- Genre: HORROR / SCI-FI / FANTASY
- Rating: Not Rated
- Release Date: April 2015
Movie Reviews
Reviews:
5 stars out of 5 -- "One of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years -- with awards-quality lead work from Essie Davis..." - 10/17/2014 Empire
5 stars out of 5 -- "Scared, scarred and scary, Davis and Wiseman both give extraordinary performances." - 10/20/2014 Total Film
"[T]he movie has an emotional intensity uncommon to its genre, thanks mostly to its principal performance....Davis offers an alarming portrait of maternal affection pushed to its furthest limits." -- Grade: A- - 11/25/2014 A.V. Club
"In an age when horror movies have mostly become lazy and toothless, here's one with ambition and bite." -- Grade: B+ - 11/26/2014 Entertainment Weekly
3 stars out of 4 -- "Let's just say that this nerve-frying psychological thriller from gifted first-time filmmaker Jennifer Kent will have you climbing the walls simply by plumbing the violence of the mind. Brace yourself." - 11/26/2014 Rolling Stone
"THE BABADOOK is a smart, darkly drawn modern-day horror movie of monsters, memories and mothers." - 11/26/2014 Los Angeles Times
"The brilliance of THE BABADOOK, beyond Ms. Kent’s skillful deployment of the tried-and-true visual and aural techniques of movie horror, lies in its interlocking ambiguities." - 11/28/2014 New York Times
3.5 stars out of 4 -- "[E]motionally engaged, consistently gripping, beautifully constructed and paced, and really hella scary..." - 11/28/2014 RogerEbert.com
"[T]he feature debut of writer-director Jennifer Kent is not just genuinely, deeply scary, but also a beautifully told tale of a mother and son, enriched with layers of contradiction and ambiguity." - 12/11/2014 Washington Post
"This is the scariest movie of the year....Essie Davis is a blood-sweat-and-tears tour de force as Amelia..." - 12/18/2014 Chicago Sun-Times