UKC

Just saw this 2014 'horror' film. Quite amazing for the budget (30k I believe) and, the the more I think about it, the more it's grown on me. A bit like the sixth sense, late realisation what the elephant in the room (the 'monster') is. Little/large clues as you go along. However, I have to say I didn't quite understand the hype whilst watching it.

What did others think?

In reply to Skyfall:

Pants.

In reply to DaveX:

Short and to the point

What intrigues me is why it gets about 95%+ on rotten tomatoes etc.

In reply to Skyfall:

I loved it, my friend however with similar taste didn't enjoy it. I don't know if me being a parent (he isn't) was an influence?

I found myself shouting at the screen (the bit with the dog), luckily I bought the dvd and didn't go to the cinema. I found it incredibly tense, though I did think the end was a little much.

In reply to Caroline_Schofield:

I found myself analysing it afterwards but didn't find it very tense. I can see why it would resonate as a parent and the whole monster = loss/grief thing was very well done, including some of the hints that it was her. However, despite that being ultimately clever and moving, I didn't really get it on a basic - this is supposed to scare me - level. And I do think it was effectively sold as a quirky horror movie.

In hindsight it seems fairly clearly to me that she was the cause of everything which was going wrong and almost certainly wrote the book, but do you think she was in fact physically abusing the child (including the scene showing him being thrown at the wall) and perhaps had been doing so for a while? The ending was quite strange too - I suppose getting her grief under contol but never quite getting rid of it. Probably a good way to portray it although making for a strange ending with various interpretations.

I thought her portayal of a mentally exhausted and grieving mother with blame issues with the child was excellent btw. As I say, just didn't work for me as a scary film in the vein of the sort of possession film (e.g. Insidious) which it seemed to set out to be.

In reply to Skyfall:

I suppose different people just find different things scary. To me the concept of hurting my child is about the most terrifying thing I could imagine and I found the character very relatable. The concept of the inner darkness and anger that is inside all of us becoming uncontrollable and it's own force I found frightening; I was tense all the way through but mainly because I was convinced she was going to kill him.

Where it fell down for me was over playing the physicality of the babadook itself; I saw the babadook was a metaphor for the grief and anger she feels. Her dark side is the babadook. Making it a more obvious entity blurred the lines . I would say that almost certainly she threw the little boy against the wall, just as she killed the dog.

It reminded me of The Shining. The slow decent into madness.

I would call it a psychological horror film, but then horror is a massive genre. I think a lot of what gets classes as horror now is less scary and more just ridiculously graphically violent. I like the more subtle end.

Insidious was okay, I didn't like the end and I've not thought about it since so it didn't leave any impact I recently watched sinister and I found that a similar sort of film.