The Babadook (2014)

Kent's slow-building, expertly unnerving horror about a broken Australian family and a sinister pop-up book is female-centric and rigorously non-digital, with crisp compositions and a riveting lead performance from Essie Davis.

Kent's assured first feature is one of the strongest horror films of recent years, gripping and horribly credible with awards-quality work from Essie Davis and a brilliantly designed monster.

Kent's debut is the most haunting chiller of the year, a moving and funny portrait of grief that gets under the skin with its lo-fi effects and credible performances.

The real horror lies in the strained mother-son relationship and undigested grief rather than the monster itself. Kent stages familiar material with panache and the film has uncommon emotional intensity thanks to Essie Davis's alarming performance.

The critic praises the film's masterly control and superb acting as a tense, claustrophobic Freudian chiller about a mother and son. He singles out the sound design and the way it explores themes of grief and parenting through a supernatural tale.

The critic calls it an accomplished and imaginative psychological horror tale that delivers seat-grabbing jolts while touching on themes of loss and grief. It singles out the meticulous design and direction that blend references to early cinema and fairy tales.

It is a phenomenally scary chiller that is essentially an epic struggle within a mother's mind over grief and resentment toward her child. The film offers marvelous ghoulish images and a new way to view the stresses of family life.

The film is a shattering psychological study whose supernatural aspect serves as catalyst for exploring fractured psyches and the primordial fears of single motherhood. It escalates from eerie mood to Grand Guignol madness while re-appropriating genre tropes with assurance.

The critic calls it a fine film that restores horror to emotional inquiry by making the peril feel partly of the mother's own making rather than purely external. It singles out the stop-motion book sequence and the way the story tames the nightmare instead of simply vanquishing it.

Kent's feature debut is both a terrific spook story and a moving ode to mourning, with extraordinary performances from Davis and Wiseman and a title that sounds scary.

Kent's creepy corker is an eerie, unsettling and promising debut from an exciting new talent, riven with grief and fuelled by ambiguity and slow-burn dread rather than cheap shocks. It culminates in a witty, unexpected finale.

The critic describes a smart, darkly drawn modern horror tale centered on a mother's love and the monsters of memory. It singles out Essie Davis's standout performance that conveys the rising resentment, fear, and rage as sanity slips away.

Jennifer Kent's striking debut is a bold psychological horror owing as much to Polanski as Dahl, an intensely emotional allegory on grief, guilt and maternal trauma. Essie Davis delivers a monumental performance as the anguished mother confronting the monstrous Babadook.

The film adds depth to familiar genre trappings for a chilling effect at its Sundance premiere.

The film is a distinctive domestic horror story physicalizing unresolved traumas as a malevolent entity. It is stronger in psychological unease than frights, driven by a standout performance from Essie Davis and a handcrafted pre-digital style.

The critic finds the film a skillful horror debut that plays on deep ambiguities about whether the monster is supernatural or a manifestation of grief and maternal stress. It singles out the visual and aural techniques that build dread alongside the psychological layers of the mother-son relationship.

The critic calls it a terrifying film with genuine poignancy and depth that employs genre trappings creatively and with real intelligence. They single out Essie Davis's emotionally bare performance and the intimate mother-son pairing for particular praise.

The critic describes it as a magnificently disconcerting intelligent psychological study of loneliness, trauma and a mother's bond with her child that will cause many nightmares. They single out the brilliant performances from the two leads for praise while noting weaker moments when the monster appears physically.

The critic calls it one of the best horror movies in years, a vigorous and hellishly intense story about a family on the edge of sanity. They single out the strong performances by Essie Davis and Noah Wiseman for praise, particularly how they convey the emotional turmoil of grief.

The critic calls it the year's best horror film and a powerful exploration of ambivalent motherhood. They single out the empathetic, true-to-life portrayal of the exhausted single mother and her difficult son as the film's core strength.

The film is a well-crafted, dread-filled horror debut that effectively gets under the skin with its atmosphere and symbolism of maternal guilt, but it becomes exhausting due to unrelenting tension without relief.