“The Babadook” strikes terror in unique, clever ways

The best horror films translate nerve-jangling fears into frightening scenarios, tapping into conscious as well as suppressed anxieties: the malevolent stranger, the elusive intruder, or the evil doppelganger. The deliriously unnerving Australian film “The Babadook” capitalizes on those terrors, probing the dark, repressed unconscious of widow Amelia who struggles to care for and about her increasingly difficult son Samuel.

Building in the most unsettling way, the film establishes the most ordinary events, enticing the viewer into a recognizably pleasant, middle class life. This makes the unraveling of calm more disconcerting because this is a cozy world, not an unrecognizable universe or an alien enclave. This is familiar, comfortable territory. Then, piece-by-piece, predictable, reassuring calm dissipates, feeding easily summoned dread.

The title “The Babadook” refers to a children’s pop-up book that Amelia reads to 7-year-old Samuel, hoping to lull him to sleep with an innocuous bedtime story. It is anything but as the Babadook pushes its way into their lives. What makes it particularly effective is its reliance on psychological elements, that is, the monster is a projection of interior features not exterior threat. How much does grief, survivor’s guilt, resentment and anger factor in? Do we all have a Babadook to tame?

As Amelia, Essie Davis delivers an exquisitely calibrated performance. Initially, she’s a loving, indulgent mother. Then, gear-by-gear, she loosens her inner demon, what a Freudian would call the return of the repressed. It’s not that she blames Samuel for the death of her husband in an accident as he drove Amelia to the hospital delivery room. But Samuel’s clinging, dependent, irascible personality wears on her in perfectly understandable ways. Essie Davis transforms herself in the course of her meltdown. Most significantly, what she expresses via this monster is her mirror image.

In her auspicious feature film debut, writer/director Jennifer Kent uses every technical element well: Jed Kurzel’s sound design, Radek Ladczuk’s claustrophobic compositions, and Simon Njoo’s calculated editing. Rereleased now for its 10th Anniversary, “The Babadook” is an extraordinary horror film.