“Grief is like living two lives. One is where you pretend everything is alright and the other is where your heart silently screams in pain.” - unknown
This is one of the movies I consider a part of my cinematic reawakening. It was 2014 and I thought my opinions and vantage point of cinema as a whole was as it was always going to be. In a period of about a year I saw a group of more arthouse fare which changed everything about how I watch movies. I became more aware of themes and duality and appreciative of slower, more cerebral content. I was suddenly eager to learn more about the films I didn’t outright understand. Before this renaissance I experienced, research and rewatches would have bothered me to no end. But then I saw It Follows, I saw Enemy and I saw The Babadook.
To change how I watch movies means I had to learn something. So what did I learn? With The Babadook it became a prime example of genre blending and showing real respect for the horror genre. So often horror is viewed as the lesser of the genres. The stories can be hollow, generic and nonsensical. The characters are usually complete idiots and make distractingly awful decisions that routinely get them and everyone around them killed, often with extreme prejudice. The acting can be downright abysmal and the villains one dimensional. The Babadook, created by Jennifer Kent, approached the project with the same kind of reverence as a Schindler’s List or a Shawshank Redemption.
The story is multifaceted featuring themes of extreme fear and dramatic beats like grief, loss and depression. It utilizes these themes to amplify the terror these characters begin to experience. The drama feeds the horror. Their grief from immense loss forces a kind of vulnerability in the characters they cannot yet escape from allowing the evil to grow from their pain. In the case of The Babadook, the evil manifested from their suffering is a cloaked entity immersed in shadow and obscurity. Its mysterious appearance is as much an asset to its purpose as is the legend of its origins.
Amelia lost her husband the day their son, Samuel, was born. She has never recovered from his death and even as Samuel reaches his sixth birthday she simply can’t reconcile. Her depression and dissociative behavior has infected Samuel, affecting his social abilities. He is a frustrating little boy, overwhelmingly energetic with severe behavioral issues. He plagues his own mother with aggressive energy and misplaced emotions he can’t begin to process. His behavior has isolated him, receiving mistreatment from other children. His mother, Amelia, sees his desperate, layered calls for help but in her own agony she simply can’t find the strength, physically or mentally to extend any kind of genuine helping hand in his direction. They are broken and lost together.
Manifested, seemingly from thin air, Samuel gives his mother a book for her to read before his bedtime. Titled “Mister Babadook”, she examines the mysterious new book wondering where it came from. Although she is curious about its sudden and unexpected debut in her home, she opens the book and reads its ominous rhymes and showcases its disturbing pop-up imagery to a fragile but curious Samuel. From this moment on, his behavior heightens to extreme levels causing her to lose sleep, remain on edge and begin to imagine terrible things. What she fails to realize before it’s too late is that his behavior isn’t just a cry for help but a hopeless cry of warning. He is six and his insistence that a monster is haunting their home falls on deaf, exhausted and progressively angrier ears. Unfortunately, once Mister Babadook moves in, he cannot be made to leave.
One of the reasons Ridley Scott’s 1979 classic Alien is still as revered and adored as ever is because of its handling of the creature. From the moment it’s on screen to its final bow into space it’s concealed in shadow. It’s kept hidden and never completely knowable to its prey. Never knowing exactly where it is or never seeing its true size or physical traits makes the entire situation all the more visceral and terrifying. Jennifer Kent took these concepts and utilized them to great extent for her own shadow cloaked monster. We never get a full, unfiltered look at Mister Babadook as he often remains in the darkest corners of a room, only striking in sudden, shocking bursts.
Sound design also comes into play, alluding to its striking size, alien features and paranormal tendencies. He roars in darkness, but also influences in quiet whispers manipulating and contorting these two victims who are simply trying to find a place for their unrelenting grief. At their most vulnerable, a mysterious, evil entity emerges to cause such unimaginable anguish. Through brilliant cinematography, glorious practical effects and unsettling sound design these feelings of terror and sadness are heightened and exploited.
If the awards academies weren’t so baffled and afraid of horror, Essie Davis as Amelia would have undoubtedly been top choice for Best Actress of that year. She is brilliant in the same way Toni Collette is peerless in Hereditary. Two earth shattering performances completely and unjustly ignored because of the genre their performances just so happen to be in. For Essie Davis, she experiences a mental journey from normal, justifiable grief to something monstrous threatening everything about who she is as a human and perhaps more succinctly, as a mother. She is a force of nature in The Babadook and anyone who loves this movie, for many other reasons as well, loves it for what she gives to the material.
The Babadook is not a monster movie in the traditional sense. If you’re expecting a scare-a-minute kind of experience, jump scares everywhere, this is not your movie. This is a drama with elements of horror utilized to push the narrative of immense loss demonstrating what such extreme emotions feel like if it were a physical force within the home. Mister Babadook is a physical manifestation of a mother and son’s grief and until they can come to terms with how and possibly why their husband and father perished they will never rid themselves of the Babadook’s presence. His complete eradication from their lives may not be possible, but a kind of compartmentalization just may be within reach. They only need to refrain from any temptation to give in to his wretched demands.
Unrated (R Rated Equivalent) For: language, terror, frightening and disturbing imagery, some sexual content and thematic elements
Runtime: 94 minutes
After Credits Scene: No
Genre: Horror, Drama
Starring: Essie Davis, Noah Wiseman, Ben Winspear, Barbara West
Directed By: Jennifer Kent
Out of 10
Story: 9/ Acting: 10/ Directing: 10/ Visuals: 10
OVERALL: 10/10
Buy to Own: Yes.
Check out the trailer below:
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