The Babadook (2014)

The Babadook is one of the most powerful and moving films that I’ve seen in years. It tells the story of Amelia, a woman whose husband was killed in a car crash as they were on their way to the hospital to give birth to their first child. Seven years later, she’s a single parent to her son Samuel but it’s clear that she has not recovered from the trauma of her partner’s death. Moreover, she feels deeply conflicted about having to devote her life to parenting Samuel, who has a number of behavioral problems. When Samuel starts complaining that the Babadook, a monster from one of his picture books, is living in the house and tormenting him, Amelia naturally dismisses his fears as a child’s delusion, but as the film progresses, she finds it more and more difficult to deny that the Babdook is real and wants to hurt them. At this point, director Jennifer Kent makes a very important decision that makes The Babdook so much more than a good genre film. Rather than filling the film with hi-tech special effects and thus producing a standard ‘creature feature’ horror film, Kent keeps the Babadook defiantly lo-fi, a product more of the increasingly unhinged imagination of Amelia than a ‘real’ monster. Although the film is genuinely frightening, our fear comes not from sudden jump cuts, copious amounts of gore, or vividly outlandish monsters, but from a close-up and unflinching look at the psychological torment that the lead characters have to endure. Consequently, although the exact meaning of the Babadook remains a matter for debate (and this is one of the film’s many strengths), for me at least it came to symbolize Amelia’s grief, a grief that she has denied for years and thus has never come to terms with, and which is threatening to destroy her life and her relationship with her son. The resolution of the film, in this reading, signals Amelia’s ability to finally mourn the loss of her husband and move on. Crucially, however, this does NOT mean killing the monster: the Babadook still lives, but it is confined to the basement of the house (i.e., the subconscious and/or the past) and although it still needs to be acknowledged, it has lost the destructive ascendancy that it had earlier in the film. The Babadook thus develops a number of complex ideas about the nature of emotional attachments, the difficulties of (single) parenting, as well as death, grief, loss, and memory. But none of this would make the film work in and of itself were it not for the two extraordinary performances that bring these themes to life: Essie Davis as Amelia and Noah Wiseman as Samuel are both amazing and their on-screen relationship is the most miraculous thing about this wonderful film. On a personal note, I also want to say that, as the son of a mother who struggled with depression throughout her life, and was often emotionally abusive, The Babadook made an even stronger impression on me than it might on others, not least because (and I know this sounds like a strange thing to say about this film) it is so true to life.