ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #45: DUNE PART ONE (2021)

You give me half a movie, I watch it with just one of my eyes open, you dig?

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #40: VENOM: LET THERE BE CARNAGE (2021)

This film contains minimal content.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #37: NO TIME TO DIE (2021)

After this one maybe they’ll finally cast Leon S. Kennedy as the new 007/Secret Gill Man . . .

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEW #30: THE MATRIX RESURRECTIONS (2021)

This remarkable movie was made by filmmakers who didn’t want to make it for audiences that didn't want to watch it.

ONE LINE MOVIE REVIEWS #28: EVANGELION: 3.0+1.11 THRICE UPON A TIME (2021)

Thematically intriguing, but I was put off by the heavy-handed anti-Walkman propaganda.

MANGA REVIEW: ROBO SAPIENS: TALES OF TOMORROW (2018, 2019, 2021)

 

by Toranosuke Shimada

English translation by Adrienne Beck

Lyric translation by Jelly Cat

Lettering and cover design by Nicky Lim

Interior layouts by Sandy Grayson

Logo designed by George Panella

Proofreading by Dawn Davis

Edited by Alexis Roberts

Original Japanese language serialization by Kodansha  in Morning Monthly Two July 2018-June 2019.

English language publication by Seven Seas Entertainment in November 2021.

. . .

"If I wander about the shore this morning

It will bring me back to good ol' times"

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Humanity constructs intelligent machines as servants, but these robots end up-somewhat accidentally-carrying the spark of our consciousness into the far future. Humanity fell in love with technology even as it fell out of love with the biological world. We built the robots to serve our whims, to create answers to our desires, to serve our truest faith-our desire for immortality-and ended up shaping a product beyond all the cynical/cyclical schemes usually dictated by ideologies of planned obsolescence. The robots of the manga future history Robo Sapiens are built to last for tens of thousands of years. This defeat of product life cycles might be the most fanciful idea expressed by this manga. 

The future depicted is vast and tragic, but the tragic elements-global wars, nuclear meltdowns, environmental degradation-are viewed at a remove. The wondrous robots who embody superhuman fantasies are foregrounded, human frailty rests in the middle ground, and human cruelty looms in the background. Robo Sapiens could be described as dystopian, at least in part. I think it's more that dystopia is a thread in the tapestry, if you will. You strip that out and you can still make some sense of the work, but something is clearly missing. The same could be said for the idea of utopia-it's not the whole picture, but you can't just rip that out, either. 

Robo Sapiens is episodic. Each chapter seems like a stand alone story or observational vignette. Then characters from earlier chapters return, change, and secrets from the past unfold line by line, memory by memory. We meet a super robot who exists as a friend to all in need-think of a shiny chrome version of Christopher Reeves's Superman-who answers all the prayers and wishes that no deity or devil or genie in a bottle ever could. There's a dutiful caretaker of a massive subterranean nuclear waste storage facility. Early on, we meet one of the last hard-boiled detectives, complete with an old school ass-kicking certain set of skills, even though much of the rest of the narrative consists of interlocking mysteries across numbingly huge expanses of time that defy the efforts of any solitary protagonist to solve.

Much of the narrative, ultimately, is driven by a brilliant but disillusioned roboticist who creates a number of the robot characters in the story. This roboticist has become disenchanted with her fellow humans who fill the world with war and waste, but much of her contempt is expressed obliquely. During a TED Talk style presentation, we see the cruelly caricatured human audience-distracted by screens, badly dressed, ill-mannered, entitled-from her perspective. Interestingly, the robots never seem to absorb this contempt. Maybe it's an Asimov thing: robot minds are programmed to show humans the utmost benevolence. It could be that the disillusioned roboticist has taken a cue from Asimov's Laws of Robotics to prevent her contempt from being replicated inside these newly created minds. Robo Sapiens cleverly chooses to respect the privacy of one of its central figures-this bitter roboticist-and therefore preserves a sense of mystery. 

However, the robots are established as having capacious minds capable of downloading vast amounts of human history in an instant, and engaging with that infodump via fully immersive internal simulations. One of the robots is able to walk through a vast swath of human evolutionary history from cave people to present. This historically enriched robot doesn't seem to view humanity in a bad light. Ultra fast robo-brains capable of sophisticated multivariable analysis of vast amounts of historical/evolutionary/psychological/economic/sociological data results, intriguingly, in empathy and tolerance. (Compare and contrast with the sadistic supercomputer conjured up in the Harlan Ellison short story "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" who uses its vast intelligence and stores of data to inflict eternal punishment upon the last remnants of the human race.)

Robots are also constructed to be romantic mates for humans. This is, if you're wondering, handled in an extremely elliptical fashion. There's no explicit human-on-robot action, but the power dynamics are disturbing. For much of the timeline, robots are totally subject to human power. Even though they show intelligence and individuality, the living machines-designed in the image of humans-have no rights to disobey or resist their human masters. If a human tells a robot to do something-anything-it must comply. If a human desires a gendered robot, then the robot assumes whatever gender expression serves the human's wishes. 

As for specific sex acts, Robo Sapiens is, as I said, elliptical. Presumably, anything goes. Later in the narrative, humans seem to grant robots full civil rights including autonomy of thought and action. Later still, humans and robots have separated from each other, with the human population on the decline. Wars are alluded to, and it's possible the humans were defeated by the robots in some global conflagration. The robots don't seem bitter or hostile towards humans, even though the final remnants of homo sapiens do seem to be fearful of the robots. Overall, robo sapiens as a species don't seem to hold on to grudges or vendettas despite their long history of subjugation by humans. It's never completely clear if this easy going attitude on the part of robotkind is a moral stance of not antagonizing a non-threatening group of beings, or if this confidence came about after thoroughly defeating their former masters. Robo Sapiens contains no explicit depictions of warfare, so you kinda have to decide for yourself. It's eerie. It's ambiguous.

The art is curved, rounded, and non-threatening for the most part. There's a strong influence from Astro Boy creator Osamu Tezuka. Late in the timeline robots choose more imaginative forms, and are no longer bound to resemble their human creators. Writer/artist Toranosuke Shimada's robots evoke a formidable benevolence, as if the gods humanity prayed to for deliverance for countless generations could only be realized by futuristic comic book science. 

Robo Sapiens left me with the sense that humanity's yearning for immortality could ironically outlive the species by finding expression in robotic, artificially intelligent beings.

COMICS REVIEW: GOD OF TREMORS (2021)

Created/Written by Peter Milligan

Art by Piotr Kowalski

Color by Brad Simpson

Lettered by Simon Bowland

Logo Design by Gary Bedell

Edited by Mike Marts and Christina Harrington

Published by AfterShock Comics in August 2021.

. . .

"WORSHIP ME. GIVE ME YOUR ECSTACY OF TREMBLING. YOU ARE NO LONGER YOUR FATHER'S. YOU ARE MINE."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Here we have a 48 page one-shot comic book called God of Tremors. It's in an oversized format more like a magazine than your usual single comic book issue. It tells a story complete unto itself that does not require you to have read thousands of pages of prior continuity nor will you need to be rigorously drilled in the minutiae of lore and backstory in order to understand the characters, the setting, and/or the ideas it explores. It's kinda like catching an old episode of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, or Alfred Hitchcock Presents. If you've never read a comic book before in your life, God of Tremors would still be comprehensible. It's possible that it could be someone's first experience of a comic book. 

God of Tremors is about a sixteen year old British boy at the end of the 19th century who finds himself oppressed by the forces of religion, social conformity, and masculinity. His father's a fanatical Christian priest who believes that women should be the slaves of men, and that all sexuality outside of baby manufacture is a mortal sin. Never mind that dear ol' dad likes to furtively beat his dick to softcore lesbian-themed erotica. Hey, the geezer mortifies himself for his own lusts by lashing himself across the back, so, y'know, dude is consistent. Dad also likes to exorcize lust demons from his teen son by binding his arms at night when he goes to bed and whipping the kid without mercy at the least sign of resistance. The son knows this is a fucked-up, unjust situation, but what can he do about it? The young man stumbles across a possible solution deep within a mysterious forest: a bug-eyed leering statue of some forgotten deity that looks like a Jack Kirby monster. The statue speaks to the tortured teen, offering visions of the power of sexuality and Nature, and thus plants the seeds of resistance . . .

God of Tremors encompasses big ideas and brutal drama within a tight three act structure. The art evokes conflicting spaces of oppression-offices, churches, dormitories, mansions, bedrooms-and liberation-the forest, the domain of the Kirby monster god, the imagination. I especially enjoyed the way the forest comes alive whenever the power of the mysterious statue is in full effect. Ultimately, our teen protagonist is himself the battlefield for powerful forces that desire to shape him this way and that. Will the young man find his own way? Is he just a product of grinding evolutionary-dialectical processes with little to no free will of his own? 

All this . . . in a comic book of all things!

What a world . . .

COMICS REVIEW: MAWRTH VALLIIS (2021)

 by EPHK

Published by Image Comics.

. . .

"-proudly presented in its original Martian form."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

MAWRTH VALLIIS is a comic where the dialogue is in Martian but the sound effects are in the pop cultural lingua franca of Drip/MEEP/WHOOOOOOOSH/BRAAOOOOMMM/BLIP/CLICK/BLAM. It concerns a white-uniformed female fighter pilot engaging in dogfights in the skies of Mars who crash lands only to find herself in pursuit of a black-clad female enemy. I think that these are supposed to be members of rival Martian factions. A hint of Spy vs. Spy.  Their conflict in the air and on the surface reveals sinister secrets about the nature of their conflict, and who they are beneath their flight suits.

MAWRTH VALLIIS is primarily a visual experience. It is my belief that creator EPHK had things that he wanted to draw, and so he did not bother to agonize about whether they 'made sense' in terms of various Storytelling 101 nostrums. He wanted to draw cool fighter jets with ultratech cockpits and futuristic heads-up displays. He wanted to include video game inventory schematics of gadgets and weapons. He needed an Edgar Rice Burroughs-style encounter with a huge monster that nowadays plays like a boss fight from a Monster Hunter game. There's a double page spread of a techno-maze presented from an isometric perspective like a computer role-playing game like Fallout or Fallout 2. He wanted to draw the rugged vistas of Mars with visual callbacks to Monument Valley. EPHK has a background in drawing science fantasy erotica and so our heroine has a g-string rated for g-forces. 

MAWRTH VALLIIS is an exercise in the desire to draw cool-looking shit. Sure, there's a story-it even has a memorable ending-but what I enjoyed most was the sense of the author simply doing whatever they wanted however they wanted. It gave me a vibe similar to the Japanese OVAs (Original Video Animation) of yesteryear wherein underwaged/overworked animators ground out works of purest otaku-dom just to be in the anime game. 

And all this between two covers. Everything you need is here in one compact volume. MAWRTH VALLIIS did not waste my time, nor is it wasting my space. I appreciated it, I really did. I still do. 

MOVIE REVIEW: MASS (2021)

 Written and Directed by Fran Kranz

Photographed by Ryan Jackson-Healy

Edited by Yang Hua Hu

Music by Darren Morze

Starring

Martha Plimpton

Jason Isaacs

Ann Dowd

Reed Birney

. . .

"Table, chairs, Jesus watching . . ."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker.

Two couples. Husband/Wife. Husband/Wife. One pair had their child murdered in a horrific mass shooting. The other pair birthed the shooter. I mean they didn't mean to give birth to a mass shooter. That's not something you do on purpose. I hope it isn't. Militaries and police forces and gangsters and terrorist organizations train people to kill. But a mundane Mother/Father/Husband/Wife-

I guess you got these survivalist types who train up their kids to shoot, but that's not the situation in this movie, Mass.

For reasons that are both comprehensible and mysterious, these two sets of Mothers/Fathers have agreed to meet in a community room inside an Episcopalian Church. Comprehensible, because the parents wish to clear the air. Mysterious because, um, the fuck do you say, exactly, in a situation like this? The two sets of Mothers/Fathers seem to be stalking closure, healing, a chance to have their pain and grief acknowledged face-to-face, in the flesh, not filtered through the various forms of-mostly antisocial-media. I guess it's something like that. Close to that. Their conversation goes well until it doesn't. And then it gets back on track. Until it gets totally derailed. 

And then . . . 

. . . well, y'know, Mass is a movie which is trying very hard to have characters that function as close as possible to how people in real life function. No one draws a gun out of nowhere. No one dies on camera. There are no car chases. No one pulls off their face to reveal themselves to be Tom Cruise. There's a villain-the mass shooter-but no heroes. It's four people in a room trying, in some sense, to figure out how and why they got there. Dialogue is hesitant, halting, uncertain-and then it rushes out in a flood. Or it dries up like a lake in a global warming summer. Some of them are better at words than others. One of them has pretty much armored themselves up in the facts of the case down to the names of every last person murdered to blot out pesky emotions. Another has steeped themselves in neurobiology, brainscans, various trendy theories of socialization and deviance, words like 'psychopath,' and gun control advocacy in order to put a label on their torment. The parents of the mass murderer are able to describe their child's life in agonizing detail. They blame themselves, for what it's worth. The parents of the murdered child also seem to be punishing themselves for what that is worth.

The four talk it out in a pleasantly bland meeting room while Christ-on-the-Cross looks down on them. May as well be Christ-on-a-Cracker for all the good it does. Hey, maybe it would've been worse without the Jesus kitsch. None of the four seem particularly religious. What reason has God-who seemingly does nothing to prevent senseless slaughter-given them to believe in Him or His schemes? Not much. One of the four professes a belief that they will somehow see their dead child again if they can but endure, but even as they say this . . . mm, I think it's pretty clear they know they'll never see their child again but they cannot change their feelings on a dime, just because the world tells them they should get over it right about now.

The acting is excellent. Soundtrack is mostly sparse, just people talking. Camera changes aspect ratios to evoke intimacy and distance and alienation and imprisonment within grief. The four are framed as a group, as couples, as individuals, as alone in separate universes of pain, as together in a universe of pain. There's no absolute framing of anyone or anything. 

Mass is all but unbearably tragic. No closure. No phony catharsis. No insights that the four didn't have before agreeing to meet face-to-face. No bogus faith-based messaging. No naive hope that a nation-the USofA-where there are more guns than humans will ever embrace sane gun control. Just moments in an awful timeline of devastated people choosing to live and endure and try whatever they can think of to understand their pain. It's well worth your time if you're feeling up to it. 

MOVIE REVIEW: BOILING POINT (2021)

 

Directed by Philip Barantini 

Written by Philip Barantini and James Cummings

Cinematography by Matthew Lewis

Edited by Alex Fountain

Music by Aaron May and David Ridley 

Production Design by Aimee Meek

Art Direction by Deb Milner

Set Decoration by Bill Milner 

Costumes by Karen Smyth 

Produced by Hester Ruoff and Bart Ruspoli

Starring

Thomas Coombes as Health Inspector 

Stephen Graham as The Chef, Andy

Vinette Robinson as Lieutenant Chef Carly

Ray Panthaki as Lieutenant Chef Freeman

Alice Feetham as Front of House Manager Beth

Jason Flemying as Washed-Up Celebrity Chef Stakeholder Guy

Lourdes Faberes as Food Critic 

Izuka Hoyle as Camille

Malachi Kirby as Tony

Hannah Walters as Emily

Stephen McMillan as Jamie

Aine Rose Daly as Robyn

Lauryn Arjufo as Andrea

Gary Lamont as Dean 

. . .

". . . I don't really want to be here . . . I don't really know what I'm doing . . . and nobody likes me here . . ."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Third movie with the title Boiling Point. 

Is it the charm?

Well . . .

This Boiling Point is about how work stress fucks with you.

It's about how human beings make the best decisions they possibly, realistically can within hypercompetitive capitalism, how they can have hustle for miles and days and years . . . and still end up fucking miserable. 

This one is about the delusion of 'leaving it at the door' when you come to work, which is another way of saying, "This one is about how grief, shame, untreated-or undiagnosed, or even unarticulated-mental illness, class inequality, white supremacist racism-both subtle and overt, sexism-both subtle and overt, and lack of access to health-care-mental/physical fucks with you."

This is a film that expresses intense skepticism about the whole 'work/life' balance thing. Where does work end, exactly? How do we measure the 'weight' of work versus the 'weight' of life? What if you are someone suffering from intense grief in your 'life' which you have no way of magically switching off when you show up for 'work?' What about when your work stress invades your non-work life? Isn't this distinction between 'work' and 'life' a notional evasion similar to the romantic idea of 'Natural' versus 'Unnatural?'

These notions are explored convincingly, if pessimistically, in Boiling Point, a movie that isn't afraid to say, "Yes. We have many conflicts. Pretending otherwise gets us nowhere."

It's all set inside a trendy London restaurant on a busy Friday night. Workers are out sick. The operation is shortstaffed. The Chef is late. There’s a state health inspector knocking 'em down from five to three stars right before they're supposed to open. The inspector seems to take a harsher tone with workers of color than he does with the white employees. Yes, the inspector has legitimate reasons for writing up health violations, but there's a tone and attitude which could be improved-why not lay out the issues more dispassionately, with more respect for all working people? 

Eventually, the restaurant opens, and the camera takes us from the kitchen to the dining area to the bins out back and on into the freezer-it isn't that it's a large space. It's compact. It's tense. Tempers flare. Supplies are inadequate. People are showing up late or not at all. And the customers keep on coming.

You've got social media influencers hustling for freebies-"we'll boost your visibility online!"

You've got a table full of obnoxious Americans who end up groping their server even after he tells them he's happily married to his husband. 

One sequence is telling: a young blonde white woman server takes an order from a middle-aged white man who clearly relishes playing king of his family. And, oh, how he takes to this server. But then a young Black woman takes over as regular server for this table and the man treats her with nastiness and contempt. It's possible that it isn't racism . . . but it sure looks like it. Sure feels like it.

You've got a hoity-toity food critic showing up-wasn't that a plot point in Dinner Rush-and she just happens to be dating a man who is also the main financial stakeholder in the restaurant-a washed-up former celebrity chef type. This stakeholder is also the former boss of the Chef-bit of an Obi-Wan/Vader situation. 

You also have communications breaking down under stress and overload of throughput. Speed kills, to put it simply. 

The Chef has his two Lieutenant Chefs who work nonstop even whilst he ducks out to re-up whatever his adult beverage of choice happens to be in his health inspector approved water bottle. This is a source of resentment since the two Lieutenant Chefs seldom have time to relax, nor do they receive the same level of respect as The Chef even if he’s the one fucking off at inopportune moments. Fuses lit all around . . .

You've got conflict between the Kitchen Staff and the Front of House Manager. Front of House is perceived as not wanting to get its hands dirty, while Kitchen gets chewed out for being too slow. 

You've got a dishwasher who's trying to stay on top of her job while pregnant and underpaid.

You've got about a third of the staff who work there while dreaming of making it as actors, nightclub DJs, musicians, etc. "This isn't my real job-I'm actually XYZ!" type of deal. This creates a more subtle form of friction between these Daydream Believers and the Lifers: Chef, Lieutenant Chefs, Front of House Manager . . .

Blow-ups ensue. 

Ugly truths are expressed. 

But the momentum of the business seems to steamroll any hope of change.

Money must be made.

Boiling Point is another one of those movies that presents itself as being done in a single unbroken take . . . and it's convincingly done. But, you know, if it turned out there were some cleverly concealed edits it wouldn't diminish the movie in my eyes. I forgot it was all being done in one go after about ten minutes.  I was totally absorbed into the story. Where's it going? How's it going to play out?

My criticisms are minor. 

Firstly, the Chef functions as a protagonist, but this is really more of an ensemble piece. This movie works best in the tangle of its chaotic middle, wherein we cannot escape from the interconnecting dilemmas playing out in the Kitchen and Front of House arenas. When we return to the Chef as a designated protagonist figure-I dunno. It loses something. It's not badly done. I just personally resisted the process of 'collapsing into the protagonist' from the more collective outlook.

Secondly, I found myself resisting the final scene. Not badly done at all, but . . . I dunno. It's not making any compromises, that's for sure, but it's seeming finality was just a touch moralistic for what is otherwise a realistic and sociological piece.

Thirdly, the Obi-Wan/Vader stuff-the conflict between the Chef and the stakeholder guy . . . once again, not badly done at all, but I didn't care about it as much as I cared about the Front of House and Kitchen arenas. 

But Boiling Point worked for me, overall. I've watched it twice, now, and I'll probably watch it a few more times. Its drive and grittiness are absorbing, nor does it pretend that everything is going to magically be all right. I appreciate those qualities very much above all else.

So . . . I watched three different movies titled Boiling Point, and they were all pretty great. That's the world I live in, and it definitely isn't boring. 

COMICS REVIEW: MULLET COP #1 (2021)

 EPISODE ONE: RISE OF THE BUFFET WARRIOR 

Created by Tom Lintern.

Edited by Andrea Lorenzo Molinari.

Production by Marcus Guillory.

Published by Scout Comics September 2021.

. . .

"ONE MAN CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE."

. . .

Review by William D. Tucker. 

In the not-too-distant future-the year 2099, no less-huge indoor shopping malls have made a comeback as the centers of culture and as the engines of prosperity. So, all these YouTubers posting dead mall exploration reels are pointing the way to the future after all, it would seem . . .

But all is not well inside this capitalist utopia. The upper levels full of trendy, cyberpunky consumers are built upon the ruined lower depths where vicious biker gangs who cop their style from The Road Warrior, Akira, and Fist of the North Star shit it up however they please, occasionally rising up to rob and kill and destroy the shoppers and-more importantly-the goods and infrastructure these consumers worship.

To counteract these miscreants we have Mall Cops, who ride in the saddles of militarized Segway scooters kitted out with mini-rockets and Vulcan cannons. 

During a battle between the forces of Law and Anarchy, one of these Mall Cops is grievously shot in the face by a ganger, and when he awakes from his coma, he finds he has a grotesque mullet to go with his aborning sense of disillusionment. Soon, he is recruited into an undercover operation to root out the criminal scum from the lower levels of the Megamall.

Our titular Mullet Cop is a deeply unattractive man. But powerful things often come wrapped in ugly wrappers. Mullet Cop finds a renewed sense of purpose as he is introduced to his cybernetically enhanced colleague and a talking robot microwave that plays K.I.T.T. to Mullet Cop's Hoff. 

The criminal scum run an elaborate death game in the lower levels which allows for an extended goof on The Running Man, which I appreciated. 

The dialogue is full of deadpan absurdities such as,

"What’s all this? Looks like Darth Vader's bathroom in here."

The look is pleasantly pukey pastel neon.

If it gets optioned for an underwhelming movie adaptation they can cast the guy from Eastbound and Down to play Mullet Cop. 

This is allegedly the first issue of many to come, but that might just be another gag. 

I wouldn’t mind more. The jokes landed for me. The look is comically lazy and derivative of whole bunches of other shit. The dialogue is hysterical in places.

There's even a fantasy world-building map at the very end which suggests more off-kilter escapades for our mulleted avenger to blunder into and survive by the skin of his teeth. 

Mullet Cop. 

He's keeping an eye on things.

I'll keep an eye on him. 

MOVIE REVIEW: THE BABADOOK (2014)

 Written and Directed by Jennifer Kent

Director of Photography Radek Ladczuk

Production Designer Alex Holmes

Costume Designer Heather Wallace

Editor Simon Njoo

Composer Jed Kurzel

Sound Designer Frank Lipson

Starring

Essie Davis as Amelia

…

“This monster thing has got to stop, all right?”

…

Review by William D. Tucker. 

Amelia works as a caregiver in an elder home. She’s suffering grief which she cannot sufficiently process on her own, and yet she has no one in which she feels she can confide. Her son is six years old and a huge pain in the ass-but she’s not allowed to come right out and say that. Well, she’s come to believe that she’s not allowed to come right out and say it or deal with her stress in some constructive way. And then Amelia’s life is invaded by a demon from a children’s book. 

When it rains, right?

Of course, this demon-the titular Babadook-may just be a metaphor or an allegory or a symbol . . . well, it may be those things to the audience watching this movie. It seems like it’s a real thing to the people in the movie, if you follow me on this. 

The Babadook is a precise horror story where the monster is mostly kept off screen. We only know its evil in fractional manifestations. Flickering lights. Harassing phone calls. Phantom knocks on the door. Those are the mild, non-spoilery manifestations. This is also a movie which plays on childhood fears of looming shadows and being engulfed by spaces which are larger than you. We see these fear-inducing things from a child’s perspective and then from an adult’s perspective-an adult filled with the fear that they are losing their mind and their autonomy as a person.   

The Babadook could just be a horror in the mind of our protagonist. What we might be watching is a confrontation within a wounded psyche . . . I mean, I think that’s what many people come away with in the audience. But Amelia seems to perceive the demon as an actual entity making her life a living hell. 

But if the Babadook indeed exists as an entity unto itself-whether as an outside invader ruining Amelia’s life or as some strange thing brought into the world via her profound grief-then it would seem to have a place in the larger ecology of the world Amelia inhabits. The word parasite comes to mind. Maybe, also, scavenger. And also . . . jeez, I’m really walking on spoiler eggshells here. 

‘Cause this one’s an experience. You’re not gonna get the full deal from reading a review or someone’s college thesis or what have you about it. 

And if you’ve seen it already . . . then you know what’s going on. Or, you know, you’ve formed your own opinion about it. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is . . . I see the Babadook as being an entity unto itself. A dangerous, predatory thing taking advantage of its victim’s isolation and lack of connection to other people. I don’t just see it as a metaphor or an allegory or a symbol or whatever. It’s a make believe entity, sure, but I think the movie is incredibly interesting if one examines the Babadook as a bizarre and cruel life form. It has its methods. It has its reasons for being. They’re terrible methods. Its reasons don’t make anything it does less horrible. But it came from somewhere. And it ended up in Amelia’s life. 

And, once you see the movie or if you watch it again, riddle me this:

Is anyone getting what they really want from this dire situation?

And isn’t the Babadook better off . . . once it's put in its place?

It’s far from perfect how it all ends up. 

No doubt about it. 

But where else are Amelia and the Babadook supposed to go?

Everybody’s gotta live somewhere. 

And somebody’s gotta be the adult in the house.