Horror movies are rarely critical darlings, and horror movies released during the height of prestige-movie season even less. But the Australian import The Babadook has worked its way under the skin of a great many reviewers, and even clawed its way onto a few critics’ year’s-best lists. As awards-season movies go, it’s true counterprogramming: Aussie-accented dialogue, no-name stars, low-tech scares, apolitical and intimate themes, and only two characters who really matter — well, two characters plus one uninvited guest.
The characters are a mother, Amelia (Essie Davis), and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), who live together in a creaky, underpainted, down-at-the-heels house somewhere Down Under. They have, let’s say, some issues: Amelia’s husband was killed in a car accident while driving her to the hospital to give birth, and it’s quite clear that almost seven years later she hasn’t come to terms with that catastrophe. Their shadowy basement, where Samuel isn’t supposed to play or even tread, is a curated archive of her husband’s things, and her life feels frozen into misery: Once a writer, she now works among the almost-dead at a nearby nursing home, and her social circle has dwindled to her exasperated sister, who finds Amelia’s home too depressing even to visit, and a friendly but Parkinson’s-afflicted old woman who lives next door.
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