Have a Daily Scream for your daily-streaming recommendation for spooky season! (Explore last year’s Daily Scream films.)
I feel like I’ve banged on a lot about the brilliant Australian horror drama The Babadook — I previously recommended it as a streaming pick about 18 months ago — but I’m doing it again. It makes not only a terrific double feature with Your Monster, opening in US cinemas tomorrow (and in UK cinemas in December), but it’s a wonderful Halloween watch for those of you who, like me, aren’t particularly enamored of movies typically considered horror or scary. This isn’t a slasher flick, and it’s not one of those exploitation movies interested in “cool kills.” (I do not judge anyone for being drawn to those things. Horror movies of any stripe are about exploring our existential fears, which are very personal! It’s merely that those sorts of scary movies aren’t interesting to me.)
The Babadook is a story about a single mom (the goddess Essie Davis, whom you may have seen in the TV series Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries) and her six-year-old son coping with the death of her husband/his dad. Their grief manifests itself in the creepy picture book that suddenly appears on the kid’s bookshelf, and then as a creature in their basement.
Or does it? The Babadook, a scary story with rare emotional and psychological resonance, succeeds because it underscores how our own personal “demons,” which are both real and imaginary at the same time, are the things that hold the most power over us. If your house is haunted, it might be you yourself who is possessing it.
US: stream on Kanopy, Netflix, Shudder (via Prime), and Mubi (via Prime); rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
UK: stream on Prime and Netflix; rent/buy on Prime and Apple TV
See The Babadook at Letterboxd for more viewing options, including in all other global regions.
