Just wat he'd an Australian horror film called The Babadook. more for fans of suggestive rather than explicit horror (meaning not much in the way of graphics), it trad a pretty nice line between the emotional beggar of a mother whose husband was killed in a car accident driving her to the hospital to deliver her now six year-old son; the son, who obviously has some problems of his own; and the titular creature...which, for most of the film treads the "does he or does he not exist" line. A little let down by the ending, which both turned more explicit and a little bit silly, and the absolute conclusion, which was even sillier, I was nevertheless creeped out quite nicely for the first 80 minutes or so of its 90-minute runtime.
A movie folks seem to love to hate, I think, because it's not got the veneer of a Hollywood flick, I thought it was overall pretty darn well done. I suspect the ending was the result of the studio saying "not scary enough" which always makes e crazy, because sometimes the thins you don't see are far scarier than those you do. Still, they didn't go over the top...and the lead up to it had some very, very creepy moments.
The only other film I can recall recently that creeped me out like that was Sinister, a 2012 film that, with Ethan Hawke, would normally have been a no-watch for that reason alone, but the opening grabbed me so instantly and the way it built to its imwvtable conclusion was truly, well, sinister. Directed by the guy who did Exorcism of Emily Rose and Deliver Us From Evil...both quite good possession films, I think Sinister is, however, his high water mark to date.
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