In “The Babadook,” the bogeyman in this movie is especially frightening, on a level that will have you wrestling with your own demons. And you never really see it. Even though you do. As fast as you may find yourself on the verge of exposing a trusty horror movie trope, this film moves faster. It certainly doesn’t shirk from one of the biggest tropes of them all: the conflict between being normal versus being different.
What if that troubled little boy, Samuel, could just get with the program and act normally? Maybe there’s some medication he could take to control him? But what if medication is far from what is needed here? Samuel (played by Noah Wiseman) has a compelling answer to that as the film’s focus, its lightning rod.
