Revisiting THE BABADOOK: Unusual, Fresh, and Effective Horror

An air-conditioned movie theater is one thing, but when the film itself makes the hair on your body stand on end, that is quite an achievement. The Australian horror with the strange title The Babadook steers clear of the tricks typical of many contemporary horror films, striving instead to create an atmosphere of oppression more suited to a psychological drama than to a simple tale meant to provoke shivers. At the same time, it awakens a longing for classic stories about ghosts and monsters, which unfolded slowly yet captivated with their carefully thought-out structure and traditional execution.

Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut may make you feel like children who, listening to a terrifying fairy tale, prefer to hide under thick layers of bedding, naively believing that this will help in confronting the specter.

Single mother Amelia (the excellent Essie Davis with her perpetually weary face) has a hard time with her six-year-old son, Samuel (a solid debut by Noah Wiseman). The boy still believes that something will jump out of his closet at night, which translates into his fondness for constructing various kinds of weapons, including a small dart crossbow and a portable ball launcher. This worries Amelia, her sister, and also the teachers, who prefer to organize an individual course of instruction for Samuel, out of concern for the safety of the other children. 

Especially since the boy becomes unbearable and exceptionally aggressive, convinced of the existence of the Babadook, the hero of a frightening children’s book that he finds one evening among other fairy tales. Sam’s behavior drives Amelia to the brink of exhaustion, and soon she too begins to notice traces of the specter’s presence.

The threat is real, Kent seems to be saying, but its source does not necessarily have to be a ghost. This suggestion appears to drive the film, in which both the woman and her son live not so much together as alongside each other, each closed off in their own world. Sam is only six years old, so this is understandable, even when he behaves like a little demon; in the case of his mother, however, such a state of affairs raises concerns. Even before the appearance of the titular monster, the atmosphere in the protagonists’ home feels oppressive. The boy’s father died in a car accident while taking the pregnant Amelia to the hospital.

Since then, she has cultivated his memory, at the same time forbidding Sam to rummage through his belongings, and when her son clings to her more tightly, frightened, she pushes him away. Does she think there is something inappropriate in her relationship with Sam? Perhaps she is afraid that she loves him too much. Or that she does not love him at all. For Amelia, her feelings for her deceased husband are evidently still so strong that they cast a shadow over her love for her child.

She tries with all her might to be a good mother, she simply has less and less strength. It is therefore no surprise that with the appearance of the specter she herself becomes more aggressive—on the one hand she wants to protect Sam from the nightmarish figure, on the other she releases a hostility toward the boy that she has kept hidden. Or perhaps it is the Babadook itself that has possessed her? Kent very boldly draws from the genre’s treasure trove, unafraid to show us a demonic figure, though usually concealed in shadow or completely motionless.

The Babadook seems to be an archetypal specter from children’s books—dressed in black, with claws instead of fingers and a chalk-white face meant to terrify us. He always announces his arrival, and even his voice (or rather the sounds he makes) inspires fear. He exists only to scare, though only children; his artificiality is too conspicuous for him to frighten adults as well. He does, however, have an easier task, because the very house of Amelia and Samuel already inspires unease. And it is not just that the walls are painted in dark colors, and that there is one room the mother does not want the boy to enter.

With each subsequent scene the house becomes increasingly sinister, as it replaces the outside world for mother and son—it is easier for them to shut themselves inside it and fight their demon than to face reality. Despite the entire psychological burden and the atmosphere of oppression, Kent’s debut is not devoid of a discreet sense of humor and a nod toward horror classics. The opening scenes, even before the appearance of the Babadook, depict the protagonists’ everyday life, in which checking closets and looking under the bed to make sure there is no monster is a ritual.

The appearance of social services workers is not as dramatic as one might expect, perhaps because the mother and son do not hide who they really are. Even Black Sunday by Mario Bava, watched on television by Amelia, becomes a joke—on the one hand the conventional makeup of the characters can be amusing, on the other the heroine of Kent’s film easily finds similarities to her own situation on the TV screen.

The Babadook appears as something unusual, fresh, close to art-house cinema, yet efficiently employing horror elements. It is equally a showcase of Jennifer Kent’s directorial skill and of her perceptiveness and sensitivity toward the imagination of children and the world of adult traumas.

It is a bit of a pity for the Babadook itself, which comes across more as an element of décor (taken, it should be added, from German Expressionism) than as a fully fledged adversary. The monster is not as frightening as it should be, but the human characters more than make up for it.