鬼书

Emerging as a force to be reckoned with with her first two feature films, Antipodean filmmaker Jennifer Kent is such a top-line storyteller and sophisticated aesthete that every cinephile should put her on the esteemed pedestal as, perhaps, the next Jane Campion (if we lack a more germane comparison).

THE BADADOOK is a small-scale, low-budget horror feat, economically ekes out the hair-raising imagery of its titular creature (you never catch its entirety but it haunts from the ground up), but smartly uses it as a surrogate of one’s inescapable grief. Amelia Vanek (Davis) is a single mother, whose husband Oscar (Winspear) died in a car accident when driving her to deliver their baby, six years later, the behavior of her son Samuel (Wiseman) becomes increasingly erratic after being startled by a pop-up book called Mr. Babadook, he has been always imagining some monster presence at home, but this time, Mr. Babadook’s menacing influence starts to get the better of a jaded and distraught Amelia, who begins to lose her marbles and even goes filicidal just as the book portends.

A bedtime story turns into a dreadful incubus, Kent is so effective in keeping her no-frills narrative squarely gripping from A to Z, all the familiar haunted house tropes are engineered in such a minimalistic yet eloquent fashion (foley effect included) that not for once, she deigns to deploy cheap jump-scares to be deliberately spooky, all the tension, suspense and thrill, is emanated from the organically and quaintly orchestrated gravitas that also requests Herculean effort from the mother-son dyad.

A dewy-eyed tyke shifting between an obstreperous brat to a spunky guardian, Noah Wiseman is a revelation as a child actor, the verisimilitude of a bedeviled kid he embodies almost elicits our worry that the dark material might mar his own childhood innocence (which Kent conscientiously ascertains his playacting is seamlessly edited together without revealing too much plot details). However, the real deal is, beyond any shadow of a doubt, Essie Davis, who transmutes from a soft-spoken, caring mother to a somnambulistic, demonic monster with such strenuous exertion and commitment, that she can knock flat dead any number of unprepared viewers, and more than anything, Kent’s compassionate, sage message of coming to terms with one’s own inner demon with plenary sobriety and frankness hits the bull’s-eye with distinction.

referential entries: Andrés Muschietti’s MAMA (2013, 5.7/10).

我倒是觉得挺恐怖的，不是那种浅显的一惊一乍式的恐怖，这是好电影。她并不爱自己孩子，看到孩子总能回想起七年前失去丈夫的情形，她无法忘记，孩子的生日就是丈夫的祭日，其内心深处把这当做是孩子造成的，可是孩子并没有做错什么，她内心压制了很久，一句我希望死的是你而不是他，这是一切最根本的原因也是最原始最纯粹的想法，还有其面对问题的态度可能，加剧了巴巴杜的形成，那就是逃避，她不愿去提及丈夫的死亡，不愿给孩子过生日，恐惧来临时也是盖上被子，希望问题消失，也不愿直面内心的恐惧，只是把它压制在心底，巴巴杜其实是她内心深处这个想法的具象表现，他羡慕其他人有足够的时间过自己的生活而不是跟她“恨”的孩子在一起，孩子也知道母亲每年生日都不开心所以早就有了防备不过，这次的问题是最大的，孩子的爱是纯粹的，我知道你不爱我，但是我爱你，我希望能跟你在一起不分开，我要保护你，帮她“战胜”了巴巴杜，至少她处于上风了，内心的巴巴杜无法被消灭只能被压制住，具体可以参考电影首页的前3篇影评，另外说一句我认为她教育孩子的方式也是有问题的，为何不直接告诉孩子这么做是不对的，别人讨厌我们，是因为你做错了，你不能这样做，并且告诉孩子，我需要什么，比如我要睡觉~她总在不该忍耐孩子的时候忍耐，在孩子提出正常诉求时却在斥责，

片中妈妈在开头的一段梦就暗示了整部片是有关她与睡眠的拉锯战。儿子的想象力与旺盛精力、工作的不顺利、朋友的不理解都压在这个单身母亲的身上，而夜晚属于她的梦境总是匆匆流逝。

电影运用被子的手法非常惊艳，人压在被子下，一种私密感和压抑感顿生，明与暗的转化更加速了时间的流逝，那一幕怪物出现，也是被子给了一个缓冲，同时加大了心理压力的砝码。而当妈妈选择给儿子吃镇定剂，那天晚上她缓缓降落在被子上，拥有了一次完整的睡眠时间，第二天早上醒来她脸上真的闪现着甜美的少女模样，这一幕让我觉得非常美，并且与后面的恐惧崩溃形成了极大的对比。

之后怪物的影响增大，妈妈逐渐发现了这个怪物的力量源自何处：那个她反反复复回忆起的丈夫去世那天的情景。就连怪物的形象也与丈夫留下的衣服相关。在无穷无尽的长夜中，她是否不断地回到那个可怕的雨夜，看着丈夫的头颅在自己面前粉碎。睡眠对她来说，是必要的毒药，是反反复复的阵痛和平静。即使没有怪物，她的精神也在逐渐地崩溃。

另一方面，通常具象化心魔的故事在怪物形象设计和恐怖度上总是有些吃亏，之前看过一部《无底洞》，借助场景设计还不错；这部《鬼书》就是以氛围感和黑夜融合造型的方式取胜，不过感觉处理地有点太物理化了，最后还吐血，感觉太过“驱魔”感了，最后用蚯蚓喂食心魔是为了呼应童书这个主题吗，有点怪怪的。

我觉得电影对儿子的性格处理有点小问题，前半部分的偏执和神经质在后期消失了，不过可能也跟电影前期视角和妈妈重叠度大，后期和儿子重叠度大相关。但是儿子的神经质本身也是妈妈心理负担的重要部分，后期强化了爱和他不可思议的陷阱布置，在感觉上有些断裂。

整体来看还是瑕不掩瑜的。全剧最恐怖时刻，妈妈敲门，最后一跃而起跳到门框上用脚踹门，一瞬间我回忆起之前看的《遗传厄运》，一般妈妈被附身后都很强悍。同时这也说明，安稳的睡眠是力量的来源。