The Babadook

First off, all I have to say is wow. This movie was great! Not my favorite movie ever, but it was pretty good. It sort of started out slow but then got suspenseful real fast. Honestly, this movie is the best movie that we've watched in this class so far (at least from my perspective.) You kind of felt for the mom, since she was a single mother with an annoying son that got into a bunch if mischief at school. I kind of related her sort of like Jack Torrance from The Shining because of the hysteria she was in when the Babadook possessed her breaking down doors and trying to kill her son, like Jack Torrance tried to do in The Shining and whatnot. There were plenty of differences within the two movies, but it could be closely compared to The Shining, which I thoroughly enjoyed throughout the movie. Anyways, on to the topic of gender and the horror genre. Most of the time in horror movies, the villain is a man, but we really don't know if the Babadook is a man or a woman. I personally wouldn't give it a gender, it was just sort of a beast. Women in horror movies are also stereotyped and are the victims (in this case it was true to an extent,) but Amelia was the victim AND the hero because she tamed the Babadook and sort of made it her bitch, with a little bit of help from Sam, her son. The gender roles were sort of reversed in this movie, which definitely intrigued me since Amelia wasn't like the typical woman in the horror movies. To conclude, I believe that this movie was really well put together and lived up to the label of "psychological thriller."