The Batshit Crazy Story of Mister Babadook

When you walk away from a movie like this one, The Babadook, you are left wondering about certain things and you will keep wondering forever an`ever until you watch it again. It’s the same effect that the Rocky Horror Picture Show has on young audiences, even today.

I’m not sure, however, if I would recommend that moms and pops have their youngest kiddos sit through this one. First, it is batshit scary.

It’s a Hitchcock-style psychological thriller that can’t be beat. It’s especially horror-full with this week leading into Halloween. Too young an audience and you’ll end up with a nut case in your once peaceful home, like one of the lead characters in this 2014 Australian epic.

Samuel, a sweet and little six-year-old with the most excellent foreign accent and a very loud mouth, is one of the two leads in this story. Funny but not likely unconsidered is Samuel’s mouth. Just look! It’s like Mister Babadook’s.

Everything was considered in this movie, including the age of the boy. Knowing this, one has to start wondering … If you were at the State Fair amusement park, would you think, “Was The Babadook’s message to moms and pops: No one under seven-years-tall may watch it? I tell you what I say, if I had a youngin’ I certainly wouldn’t chance it.

Adults on the other hand will simply muse: Was he real? Was Mister Babadook supposed to portray a real life goblin or the ghost of something past in Samuel’s world? Was the Babadook a psychotic breakdown by his mom, Amelia? In turn, was Amelia’s horror personified in Mister Babadook?

On Going There

I’m not exaggerating when I say this movie goes there. Remember this scene from The Sopranos? When Christopher gets so high on heroin, he flops down on his girlfriend’s very cushiony sofa until the absolutely cutest little dog was heard wailing underneath him until it was fuckn’ dead. “Boo!,” said the Ba …. ba … dook, dook, dook. Yes, this movie goes there, except in one case.

Samuel’s birthday marked the same day his dad died in an accident six years ago. But, get this — the dad was on his way to taking his wife, Amelia, to the hospital to birth the boy, Samuel, then boom! Dead.

The dad is dead.

It was sudden death from an injury far worse then decapitation. So bad in fact that they only show you a cartoon of the injury, not the real thing, like the nightmare that is the book about Mister Babadook. And, in just this one case, just this one, the movie doesn’t completely go there.

Think for a second. What would it be like if you knew your birthday was the same day your dad died? And that your involvement in that death was having to be born that very minute. Would a child blame themself for that death? Would a wife?

The Beginning

The movie starts way before Amelia finally reads the book, Mister Babadook, to Samuel. She reads to him every night. Nice books. Fantastical books. Then Samuel plucks Mister Babadook from their book shelf and all hell breaks loose. It’s where the movie starts in the audiences mind because it’s the only thing explaining the nuttiness of these two, but where it actually starts is with Amelia flying through the air.

She appears stuck in some dream. She is falling through miles and miles of clouds and fog with smatterings of thick, square glass chunks flying past her while the voice of a little man is getting louder and louder. Then, as her eyes open wide, she lands on her bed to the galactically irritating cries of her sweet little boy begging her to wake up.

He’s hungry.

He’s How Old?

Samuel’s age has everything to do with this movie. He is six and on the cusp of accepting a death his mom will never be able to handle in large part because her support system completely failed her. Her friends. Her family. Even teachers pushed for her to assimilate back into a society that felt that six years was enough of the suffering already.

The death of his dad changed the social status of the boy. He was growing up bullied kid for not having a dad. This created a basis for him and Amelia’s tremendous dislike for almost everyone else in this movie. Society tragically forced them to bind to each other — and no one else — through their fears and disgust for the wearied, cold, insensitive, and heartless world of the homo saphien, us.

If I tell you anymore about this marvelous story, Gentle Reader, I’d have to un-alive you. So I won’t.

But somewhere during the story, you will see little Samuel move beyond the death of his dad, re-telling his story to complete strangers with his not-so-innocent smile. So not-so-innocent is his smile that it’s arresting. And, funny at the same time. Horrifyingly funny.

You owe it to yourself to watch it at least once. I bet you’ll cackle too, you’ll “never watch it again,” when we all already know … you will.