Noah Wiseman

Samuel Vanek's demands are hard to sit through, and Noah Wiseman does not soften them by asking us to find him charming. In The Babadook (2014), he pushes the child's neediness until we understand why an exhausted mother might resent him. We felt worn down by those demands, but his evident fear kept us worried for him. We could want Samuel to stop without wanting him gone. It is forceful work, with the risk of losing our sympathy never far away.

Jennifer Kent's film depends on the strain between Wiseman and Essie Davis. Davis makes the mother's resentment credible, and Wiseman gives her a child whose distress cannot simply be dismissed. He moves between fear, anger and sweetness, which stops Samuel becoming merely a collection of difficult behaviours. The sweetness gives us a reason to hope mother and son might find some ease together. Neither actor makes the other character disposable, and their work together gives the horror a family worth worrying about.

The career around this performance is slight. His screen work began with the short The Gift (2013), and The Babadook remains his sole feature role. Later credits include the shorts Spaghetti (2015), Le Miroir (2020) and Survive the Dead (2024). These establish continued work, but give us little basis for describing a change of direction or identifying which habits have endured. We would be cautious about treating one demanding childhood role as a reliable guide to the actor he may become.

There are stretches of The Babadook when Samuel's demands become wearing, and the film does not always need quite so much of them. Finding him irritating is a fair response; dismissing Wiseman's performance on that basis misses how clearly he makes the fear register. Kent gives that discomfort room, and Davis supplies an equally credible reason for patience running short. See it for the two performances, but choose an evening when the household can accommodate another demanding child.