The Babadook

90 Wow, a this movie is truly a masterclass in horror, great tension build up, unparalleled sound design, amazing atmosphere, and some truly elevated jump scares. Ill start with the tension, this movie is able to put us inside of Amelia’s head which works super well with how twitchy she is, the constant looking over the shoulder is super effective and especially whenever they are in that house, which leads me to my next point. Theres just something about this house, it is one of the most simple but so incredibly effective main locations and atmosphere for a horror movie, don’t know if its how old and creaky it is or just the pure isolation of it, but it just works so well to create that creepy ass place for these 2. Something that also adds to this is the sound design, its unbelievable, the in and out buzzing, the scratching, the pattering, and the voices especially work together so well to bring the scares all together. As far as the jump scares go, beside a couple of them work really well, the ones containing the creature are kinda cheap and predictable, but the ones that involve her mind and the psychological aspects are truly incredible and are as good as jump scares get for me. What separates this one from the rest if the horror movies is its themes, this movie could have just given us very surface themes for these 2 but gives us some super mature and truly tragic themes to cling to, Amelia’s story is truly heartbreaking and watching her breakdown almost brought tears to my eyes by the end. Its really amazing how they were able to capture so much in her character. As far as the other characters go, beside the son, who although I get what they are going for comes off very annoying unfortunately, are pretty dull though. The climax is also very well made, I didn’t really see it ending and it was constant terror, just constant. All around just very haunting and although the ending leaves some to be desired it works well for the mental illness themes throughout. This rating needed a bump up, on a rewatch there is so much more to see, mainly for Amelia and all of her mental illness themes, great.