Jennifer Kent's film about the horrors of parenting has no harbinger to announce to Amelia (Essie Davis) that her world will soon be upended; she has to read the book herself to find out. Amelia is severely sleep-deprived and hopes that reading a mysterious pop-up book will put Samuel (Noah Wiseman) to sleep. The first few pages start off pretty unassuming--a character with a silly name like the Babadook lends itself to a child's story--but the warning comes quickly enough. The shy, little silhouette that accompanies the line "A friend of you and me" becomes a towering figure looms over a small drawing that looks a lot like Amelia. Each illustration is designed to lurk in the darkness, and Jennifer Kent builds on the dread by obscuring more
