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Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Babadook’ is a new horror great

The Babadook contains DNA from such disparate influences as Roman Polanski, Joe Dante, Georges Méliès, German expressionism, and Roald Dahl, but Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s very impressive feature debut is an intensely emotional horror film that feels completely unique in the current film landscape. It’s an allegory on grief, love, loss, and maternal trauma, and is as consistently unnerving as many a Polanski movie (and is the scariest thing with Roald Dahl blood since Tim Burton’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory).

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Fantastic Fest 2014: ‘The Babadook’ is as much an exploration of grief as it is a terrifying horror film

In the 2010 film Rabbit Hole, a character compares grief to a stone that you carry around in your pocket. There are times when it is easy to forget about this extra weight, but then one day you reach into your jacket and suddenly remember that it’s there. The grief of losing a loved one can never fully vanish. It will always be there in some form, whether it be as a stone in your pocket or as a spindly fingered, top hat-wearing boogeyman. If that latter comparison makes little sense, then you should see Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook. In addition to being a thoroughly satisfying horror film, it is an extraordinary character-driven story about a woman trying to recover from the loss of her husband.

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BBC America Announces Dylan Thomas Film from Screenwriter Andrew Davies

BBC America has acquired A Poet in New York, a film about Dylan Thomas’ final days. The drama is written by Andrew Davies, BBC’s venerable screenwriter most acclaimed for the 1995 Pride and Prejudice as well as more recent well-received series like House of Cards and Little Dorrit.  It features several beloved BBC actors, with Tom …

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Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries series two is delightfully adequate

The murder mystery procedural is a durable genre that is open to various permutations. A slight tweak (the Detective is blind! He can communicate with his dog! She is a part-time stockbroker!) is all that is really needed to get things rolling, and then, so long as the bodies keep piling up, occasional spice is enough to keep a series running forever.

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