Nestled deep within this teeny Australian thriller packs a simple yet profound message about what it often feels like to be a single parent, and even what it feels like to be the child of that parent.

| Original Score: B+ | Sep 1, 2017

The Babadook's villains and victims are still running amok in my brain. I think they might be there for some time.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2016

What's most terrifying about The Babadook is that Kent grounds a bizarre supernatural premise in very real feelings of anxiety and depression.

| Oct 5, 2016

Davis gives one of the best performances you will see this, or in any other, year.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 5, 2016

The style of the film is not teasing exactly -- it's too sad and lonely -- but there is certainly a hair-pulling mixture of glum laughter and vast apprehension. Is the demon real? Does it matter?

| Original Score: 4/5 | Oct 5, 2016

A deftly inventive and psychologically charged horror story that trades on the ways in which the prospect of maternal failure can be just as fearsome a boogeyman as any monster under the bed.

| Oct 5, 2016

Kent is tapping into something far more unnerving than serial killers or the supernatural: the everyday terror of being a parent.

| Jun 7, 2016

Rarely outside of drama do we see the kind of imperfect motherhood shown in The Babadook, which is what makes this Repulsion-like household of horrors so frightening.

| May 10, 2016

The film has a solid grasp on the mutable, but ever-present pain of loss.

| Jan 21, 2016

The line between terrifying reality and terrifying fantasy isn't so much blurred as altogether obliterated.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Mar 6, 2015

This simple yet shiver-inducing tale, the auspicious feature debut of Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent, makes for one of the better horror movies of recent times.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Mar 5, 2015

It presents grief as a demon, questions reality, and creeps out the viewer by making psychopathology seem like something that could happen to anybody.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Mar 5, 2015

At its heart, "The Babadook" is a story of mother and son, whose relationship ultimately determines whether they survive the demon - or die trying.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Jan 15, 2015

In the running with Boyhood as my favorite movie of 2014 is another work that turns on the challenges of parenting. This one is a tad more insane.

| Jan 3, 2015

As someone who has developed a pretty thick Critic's Shield from years of watching standard haunted house/possessed human/mythological-creature fare, I have to say I was genuinely freaked out by some of the passages in The Badabook.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4 | Jan 3, 2015

The Babadook is easily the best horror film of 2014. But bolstered by knockout performances, and a mind-bending narrative beautifully shot and colored, The Babadook is so much more. It's one of the best films of the year.

| Original Score: 4.5/5 | Jan 3, 2015

The Babadook makes a convincing argument for classy, psychological horror cinema even as it fails to meet its own lofty standard.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Jan 3, 2015

Kent has taste, an eye and a knack for brisk, accelerated pacing. In the case of "The Babadook," familiarity breeds an eerily gratifying contentment.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 18, 2014

Writer-director Jennifer Kent lets the dread creep in slowly, and wisely goes easy on the effects; she knows that hand-drawn pop-ups can be more than enough to unsettle things

| Original Score: 4/5 | Dec 17, 2014

An extraordinary film that taps into the fears of both childhood and adulthood.

| Dec 15, 2014