In my recent blog on DigiCult
Selected Scottish Shorts 2009-2013 I discussed the reason why short
films are made, one of the reasons I suggested was to impress someone enough to
provide finance and backing to make a full length feature that had been spring
boarded from your basic ideas. Director and writer Jennifer Kent did just that.
In 2005 she made a ten minute black and white short called Monster about a doll that appears to come to life and reside in the
closet of a young boy (Luke Ikimis-Healey) and his mother (Susan Prior), we do not obviously have a back-story
or time to flesh out the characters. But some nine years later Kent did just
that when she produced from that short film, a 94 minute psychological horror
film, similarly about a woman and her son who are tormented by an 'imaginary'
monster. Kent’s debut feature film is an extremely raw and emotional roller coaster ride about a mother and son relationship, which is retained as the core of her well-written story.
Samuel dreams and obsesses about
monsters something that his mother Amelia is told ‘is quite normal for a six-year-old
boy’. It’s pretty obvious that Samuel behavioural problems steam from a lot
more than a vivid imagination. In fact we learn that his father Oscar was
killed in a car crash, which happened while Oscar was taking his pregnant wife
to hospital to give birth to Samuel. The lonely Amelia and her son do not seem
to have developed a normal relationship with any one else other than an elderly
neighbour. Mother’s only relief from working full time in a care home and
looking after her son is to pleasure herself in bed at night. Samuels’s metal
state gets worse when he finds a book called Mister Babadook that he insists his
mother must read to him at bedtime. It’s not very long before they both realise
that you can't get rid of Babadook!
This is a very good horror film,
which has a depth and does not rely on the normal cliché’s found in this type
of genre that are generally made outside of Europe. We sense that far more is
going on in the psyche of our two protagonists but especially with the mother.
She has never got over the death of her late husband and its obvious that she
has never grieved properly and that she must come to terms with her lose and
grief before she can move on. She lives in a vacuum of her own making and this
has affected her young son who has been excluded from school, with other
children outside of school not allowed to play with him 'this strange child' has descended into his
own imagination triggered by his mothers psychosis.
Exceptionally well put together
and filmed, this virtual two hander is totally convincing. With the big-eyed
six-year-old Noah Wiseman playing Samuel, from a very ambitious script
incidentally, and the Australian award-winning actress Essie Davis playing
mother the casting is first rate. Davis especially, watching her deterioration
was not a pretty sight and how she begins to treat her son and the household
pet will not please all viewers. But if I have learnt one thing from watching
this movie it's that people who have mental problem should not watch horror
films late at night - even if you do suffer from insomnia! Filmed in South Australia this Kickstart
funded project is well worth seeing, I believe its out now on DVD.
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