The book of right-off

The Babadook

Crit

This is addressed to my friend Lisa, who has an impressive collection of pop-up books: sorry, but you weren't around, and I couldn't wait to see it. Moreover, I don't know how high your tolerance for scary movies is, but I should tell you that this is the scariest film I've seen as an adult, a brilliant fogging of psychology and supernatural. The setup is this: Samuel (a perfectly cute/creepy Noah Wiseman) is a deeply disturbed not-quite-7-year-old, the disturbance arising from the fact that his father died in a car accident while taking his mother (Essie Davis) to the hospital to give birth. Without giving too much away, it also develops that Amelia is not quite the unconditionally loving mother she first seems. Into this standard haunting environment (locked basement door, dog occasionally barking at mysterious noises, cockroaches bursting from a hole behind the fridge) comes the worst children's pop-up book ever, or at least the one best calculated to keep anyone in the house from enjoying a night's sleep. And so it gets worse from there.

An absolutely terrific (in every sense) film, written and directed by Jennifer Kent, her first feature after a long and uneventful acting career. It is so good that I recommend that you skip it.