Two terrific, don’t-miss films come to the Martha’s Vineyard Film Center starting Thursday, March 19. Australian-made The Babadook is a good bet to become a horror classic on a par with Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 The Shining, memorably starring Jack Nicholson. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which plays several times through the weekend, is a sequel that lives up to, and even surpasses, the original in humor and sophistication.
Directed by Jennifer Kent, The Babadook has won 35 awards. It stars Essie Davis as Amelia, the widowed mother of Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a precocious and unmanageable 6-year-old. Amelia’s husband was killed in an auto accident while taking his wife to the hospital to deliver Samuel, and Amelia has not yet recovered from the trauma. When a mysterious children’s book titled The Babadook shows up in Samuel’s room and Amelia reads it to her son, the book’s evil and imaginary narrator takes over.
Derived from the Serbian word for bogeyman, the Babadook disrupts Amelia’s sleep and convinces Samuel that it is a genuine, threatening presence in the house. Samuel terrifies other children at school and his aunt’s home with stories of this dark monster. Singsong lines from the book inspire Samuel to use his homemade weapons to protect the household from the Babadook.
As sleep-derived Amelia grows more and more distraught, the Babadook materializes as a cinematically real incubus who wreaks havoc on this sad, dysfunctional family. What makes the movie so powerful is the way both Amelia and Samuel vacillate between vulnerable, appealing victims of the Babadook and demonically possessed perpetrators of bad things. Ms. Kent animates the Babadook by utilizing many of the horror conventions — strange noises, doors that open mysteriously, knives that threaten to maim. They work because The Babadook feeds psychologically on the anger and frustration buried in the psyche of any mother, and the obnoxious, almost out-of-control dimensions of every child. Be forewarned: You may not sleep well after watching The Babadook.
Starting with the pun embedded in its title, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel makes fun of the inevitable approach of mortality facing the residents of an Indian hotel for the elderly. It suggests there’s still time for romance and rewarding work. With a cast of capable, much-loved actors, including Maggie Smith as Muriel, Judi Dench as Evelyn, Bill Nighy as Douglas, and Dev Patel as the irrepressible hotel manager Sonny Kapoor, this sequel capitalizes on the audience’s familiarity with the narrative lines and characters of the original Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. The adventures of this slightly loony crowd of Brits and Americans are set against the rich and colorful background of India.
Richard Gere joins the cast as a would-be novelist, suspected by Sonny of being a spy who is checking to see if the Marigold Hotel has the wherewithal for an expansion. The fact that this new plot twist is a bit threadbare doesn’t matter. It simply provides an excuse for the hotel’s residents to go about the business of living. With so many current movies addressing the contemporary world’s woes, The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel provides a welcome reminder that all is not lost, and that a good laugh helps us all through the rough patches.
The Babadook, Thursday, March 19, 7:30 pm.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Friday, March 20, and Saturday, March 21, 7:30 pm; Sunday, March 22, 4 pm. All films at Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, Tisbury Marketplace, Vineyard Haven. For tickets and information, go to mvfilmsociety.com.
