In the long and not entirely illustrious history of horror cinema, there can’t have been many examples of the genre with a less scary-sounding title than The Babadook (Icon, 15) – the word “babadook”, if it’s one at all, sounds like a toddler’s mangling of a pet’s name, or a specific tribal variety of papoose board. How seriously can you take a film called The Babadook?
Very seriously, it turns out. Creeping up quietly from down under last year, Jennifer Kent’s small-form, big-impact debut may be the finest horror film in a decade or more, fusing post-Carpenter techniques of jolt-mongering with the handmade gothic sensibility of FW Murnau – all of it turned very Australian indeed. Back in October, I recommended Kent’s nifty short film Monster as a primer for the feature, though perhaps it’s best to face The Babadook cold. Nervy single mother Amelia certainly does: first put out by the eponymous stovepipe-hatted fiend as a character in a distinctly sinister picture book dredged up by her on-the-spectrum son Sam, she’s unprepared for it to start popping up outside the book’s pages – in her bedroom, in the rearview mirror, perhaps merely in her mind – with its cardboard claws out to cut down her already diminished family.
If that sounds silly, well it is: all the best horror locates terror in the irrational places where adults are no longer supposed to cultivate it. Among its many achievements, Kent’s film is a profound study of the contrasting ways in which parents and children process fear: as Amelia and Sam, Essie Davis and startling newcomer Noah Wiseman are an exquisitely matched, mutually consuming double act. And Davis, previously a valuable contributor on the sidelines of films such as Girl With a Pearl Earring, gives as rich and raw a performance as any of this year’s awards-season pets.
One can only hope some enterprising casting director in US television sees Kent’s film and thinks to give Davis a role as densely nuanced as Olive Kitteridge (Warner/HBO, 15), Lisa Cholodenko’s marvellous HBO miniseries scrutinising the life of a careworn Maine maths teacher. For now, however, Frances McDormand is more than happy to take the gig: etching 25 years of accumulating disappointment and calm resignation on that eternally honest face, she does the most exacting work of her career. It’s a humble triumph, too, for The Kids Are All Right director Cholodenko, with the televisual format allowing her all the deliberation and detail this slowburn dissection requires. That HBO has the resources to finance this alongside the perspiring, rumbustious yet often floridly literate spectacle of Game of Thrones (Warner/HBO, 18) – the sterling fourth season of which arrives on DVD tomorrow – is what keeps them ahead of the small-screen game.
Back to the big-screen one, where the remaining pickings are a little less rich. There’s bouncy charm and pictorial verve, at least, in the Guillermo del Toro-produced animated film The Book of Life (Fox, U) – a goofy banditos-and-bullfighting romance set against Mexico’s Day of the Dead festival – even as its narrative scatters before one’s eyes like a burst piñata. Meanwhile, narrative is utterly immaterial to join-the-dots romcom What If (Entertainment One, 15), which mines no new angles in When Harry Met Sally’s patented just-friends formula, but coasts by on the affably dorky chemistry of Daniel Radcliffe and Zoe Kazan.
This week’s streaming pick is yet another abandoned American indie given its UK premiere through the miracle of Netflix: at Sundance two years ago, Michael Polish’s Big Sur was politely viewed, considered and filed in the book of evidence for the case against adapting Jack Kerouac — but it’s a measured, affecting take on Beat mythology that deserves at least a second appraisal. Jean-Marc Barr is a surprising choice to play Kerouac’s scarcely disguised alter ego Jack Duluoz, seeking shelter from his own past successes in the eponymous region of wild California, but captures something of the author’s blunted romantic spirit. And if the film tests your patience, simply close your eyes and revel in the National’s glorious, custom-made score.
