10 Intense Slow Burn Horror Movies That Keep You Guessing

Boy, when The Babadook gets going, it really gets going - but it deliberately takes its time to bloom from a tiny spark into raging inferno.

Featuring a widow and her young son, the film portrays the mother’s struggle with overcoming grief and depression in the wake of losing her husband, raising her boy that she inadvertently blames for his death (having lost her partner in a car crash on the way to the hospital whilst in labour). A dark presence known as the Babadook attaches itself to the family, and despite its storybook whimsy, wants nothing more than to tear the pair irreparably apart.

Building up through the fairy tale exposition of a bedtime children’s story, The Babadook is nothing more than a pop up book - until strange, unexplained terrors start manifesting around the Vanek’s household. With nothing more than rhyming couplets to figure out what is hounding the mother and son and an alarmingly creepy soundscape permeating through the film, the eking out of The Babadook’s story is as terrifying as the creature itself, as we crawl through a narrative that can only end in terrifying confrontation.