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ARI SHAPIRO: A little movie from Australia is one of this season's buzziest films. It's called, "The Babadook." It's an independent, feminist horror movie. And it was a sensation at this year's Sundance Film Festival. As you'll hear, it sounds terrifying. And as NPR's Neda Ulaby explains, "The Babadook's" horror is not gory, but psychological.
NEDA ULABY: It can be tricky in "The Babadook" to tell the monsters from the heroes. The main characters are a frazzled, single mom and her difficult, 6-year-old son.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BABADOOK")
NOAH WISEMAN: (As Samuel, screaming) Mommy.
ULABY: The kid's got major behavioral problems. He's aggressive with other kids. He's convinced a monster is after him. And he has terrifying meltdowns in the car.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BABADOOK")
WISEMAN: (As Samuel, screaming) Mommy.
ESSIE DAVIS: (As Amelia, yelling) Why can't you just be normal?
WISEMAN: (As Samuel, screaming).
ULABY: Horror movie scholar Caetlin Benson-Allott finds this scene scary, emotionally and sonically.
CAETLIN BENSON-ALLOTT: What's so grating, like, when he's having his temper tantrum in the backseat, is not actually him kicking the front seat or screaming, mommy, but this sort of shrieking, electrical noise that isn't actually coming from the child.(SOUNDBITE OF FILM, "THE BABADOOK")
DAVIS: (As Amelia, sobbing).
ULABY: A great premise, she says - a child who fights monsters in his mind and his stressed-out, isolated mother.
BENSON-ALLOTT: To acknowledge that being a mother is hard, that sometimes you hate your child...