African American Movie Reviews

The Babadook: A Masterclass in Wasting My Time

Ion gon lie shawty thi shi pmo foo. People hyped up The Babadook like it was some next-level horror masterpiece, but I sat through 90 minutes of pure suffering—and not in a good way. This wasn’t horror; it was an endurance test in patience, bad decisions, and one of the most annoying kids in cinematic history.
The movie follows Amelia, a single mother who is clearly one tantrum away from drop-kicking her kid into next week. Her son, Samuel, is convinced a shadowy figure from his pop-up book—yes, a pop-up book—called The Babadook is haunting them. Instead of, I don’t know, closing the book and going to bed, the whole movie is her spiraling into madness. And not the cool kind of madness—nah, this is just exhausting parental burnout with a CGI boogeyman sprinkled in.
The supposed “horror” elements? Laughable. The Babadook itself looks like somebody’s rejected Halloween costume from 2012. And don’t even get me started on the ending—you’re telling me they just… keep it in the basement? So now she’s got a pet demon to go with her wildly unhinged child? I’ve seen more terrifying episodes of Goosebumps than this.
And let’s talk themes—because apparently, this was supposed to be some deep metaphor for grief and self-destruction. But if I wanted an emotional breakdown, I’d just check my bank account after a weekend out.
Final verdict? The Babadook is NOT it. Not scary, not entertaining, just a stressful bedtime story gone horribly wrong. If you want to feel terror, go read your old tweets from 2012—because this ain’t worth your time.