>... and a character you don't like.
>
>For the first, say, 3/4s of the movie, you're not supposed to
>like him or root for him. You're seeing him through the eyes
>of his mom, to whom he's an absolute nightmare. That's the
>point. And, in that regard, it's an insanely good and natural
>performance for an actor so young.


Disagree completely. The notion that "I'm not supposed" to like him doesn't really hold up. He's being haunted by a monster, and for that reason alone I should care. I should be horrified at mom's downward spiral of resentment and disdain toward him, but I wasn't. I get that they were showing the behaviors that drove her to that place, but they gave us nothing at all- like, at all, absolutely zero- to make him feel sympathetic or, bare minimum, someone a bit more nuanced.

Actually, we got that briefly with his obnoxious cousin and it was only because she was such a vile, soulless brat that he was remotely likable in that exchange.

Objectively speaking, I felt a brief twinge of empathy for him with the whole "you don't have a dad, nobody wants you!" thing, but that ended when he got his revenge and pushed her out of the house. I didn't fault him for it, but the creative direction would have been better served by him being left alone and crying in the wake of her abuse. Instead, he was a Big Boy, perfectly capable of handling it by himself. So the one window they had to give him some depth was blown.

I personally found his performance cheap and irritating. I was very aware he was acting, and didn't see it as "natural" in the slightest.


>Now, the argument about making the child so annoying making
>the film less effective? A totally valid complaint and
>argument. I would obviously disagree personally, but I would
>absolutely get if someone said they simply don't like watching
>a kid that annoying for so long and that a character like that
>has no place in a movie if the filmmakers want an audience to
>be absorbed. A totally understandable opinion.


but that sort of underscores my previous point; giving me a reason to like/care/relate/worry for him as a human being would have accomplished this in droves. The concept was good and well but the one element I felt they needed to make it all work was the boy. If I care about him, then the Babadook scares me mor. The character becomes less generic, more frightening, more worrisome because I'
m worried about what happens to the kid. If I care about him, mom's downward spiral is more horrifying because I care about the implications for her son. If I don't care about the boy, the rest barely matters.

>I just take issue with saying the kid's performance wasn't
>good. I think the fact that so many in here vehemently hated
>the kid is testament to the fact that his performance captured
>the character beautifully.

I'm a pro wrestling fan. Much as people like to hate on it for being fake (GASP! OMG, REALLY? But I digress, lol), there's an art to it. There's a whole psychology to it. I like the good guys, known as baby faces, but I also like the bad guys, known as heels. I appreciate a good heel because it all falls apart without good heels. There are various qualities that make for a great baby face or a great heel. Some heels, say.... CM Punk's title run as a heel a couple years ago, generate heat with brutal honesty and an air that he knows he's the guy you not only want beat up, but maybe even want to be. There's an art to getting people to hate you for the right reasons. That's good heat. That's the sort of heat that makes people want to pay to see that guy get his ass kicked by a baby face, while elevating the baby face in the process. It's this dynamic that makes for an annoying program.

Other heels generate what is known as "Go away heat", the kind of heat and hatred that isn't generated by an artfully crafted persona, but by sheer hatred and annoyance. Michael Cole's run as a heel commentator a few years back is a great example. It became so over the top, so overbearing, soooooooo fucking annoying that you don't really want to see him get beat up, you just want him GONE. Whatever. However. Just GONE.

In this case, I needed something to generate genuine concern for the boy in order to tie everything else together.You're probably correct in that the intent was to make us annoyed by the kid so that we might relate to mom more, but to me that was a miscalculation. The kid can stay annoying and grate on my nerves, but if they would have given me some reason to care for him everything else would have been elevated as a result. As it stands, I wouldn't have cared if Babadook ate him.

>Just my opinion, though.

Well of course