From the very first scene of The Babadook, Australian writer and director Jennifer Kent makes a clear and resounding statement that her debut will be more than your standard horror fare. It’s a work to transcend genre, swinging for Kubrick’s The Shining. Kent takes us into sleep-deprived Amelia’s nightmare, which replays the memory of her husband Oskar’s death coming suddenly on the night their son Sam was born. Seven years later, the still grieving widow and her troubled, fitful son happen upon a sinister children’s book titled “Mister Babadook” which invites a monstrous force into their lives who seeks to rip apart their already grief-stricken family. Kent channels the fear and exhaustion of Amelia’s sorrow-laden, single parenthood into a nightmarish meditation on loss and how life unravels when grief is left to fester.
Essie Davis’ “Amelia” is like a dead woman walking, haunted even before the horror truly begins. Her makeup-less, ghastly face communicates a level of fatigue only a single parent with a challenging child can know, as if her grief has settled into her marrow. She is a hard worker and a loving mother, but she is disintegrating.
Noah Wiseman’s “Sam” is a feral child constantly throwing a fit or getting into trouble with his hand-crafted weaponry – an exhausted parent’s worst nightmare. Sam seems emaciated by his hunger for his lost father as well as gaunt like a young kid growing into his frame. Sam is both physically and emotionally immature.
Much like the way grief has slowly consumed Amelia and Sam’s life, this filmmaking team immerses the audience in dread, a task deftly handled by production designer Alex Holmes. Being a horror film of the domestic breed, Amelia and Sam’s home quickly becomes the film’s key setting, and Holmes – as misery’s chief interior decorator – effectively steeps seven years’ worth of heartache and pain into these sparse, pictureless walls. They are lacquered a purplish-grey like worn, blood-stained bones, now only the skeleton of a once happy and hopeful home, a structure tarnished by memories of a former life. Kent and Holmes evoke the bizarre settings of Beetlejuice and Eraserhead, and this home becomes a character all its own, itself haunted by its dwellers’ grief.
With the dread saturating each and every frame by the third act, Kent unleashes the fury of the Babadook. By keeping her focus on the human characters, Kent subverts expectations and makes it clear that the monster is not the expected malevolent release of pure terror anticipated. Better yet, he (or it) is the embodiment of an evil which, over the last seven years, has gradually taken ahold of this family; he is the incarnation of Amelia’s grief.
Having hit a boiling point due to exhaustion and an inability to deal with her pain, Amelia becomes fully possessed by her own inner turmoil. Her years of untamed anguish are loosed, and when she begins to violently hurl her innermost thoughts toward Sam—feelings usually pushed to the far recesses of the sane person’s mind—the film transcends horror and becomes a brutal portrait of a woman and her all-consuming sorrow. With any other actress in the role this could’ve hit peak hysterics, but again, the brilliant and disturbing Essie Davis channels this extreme grief so effectively that I’m hard-pressed to find a performance this layered within the genre’s history, save for Linda Blair and Jack Nicholson.
Eventually, by their own unique bond of love, Amelia and Sam do end up at the threshold of healing with grief’s monster tamed. As Kent’s story remained lovingly focused on Amelia and Sam’s arc, ever-pressing them toward restoration, I was moved.
Like myself, these characters are real people in need of a fresh start, and The Babadook reminded me that we are not mere victims of an indifferent world, but that a loving, transcendent Storyteller moves all grieving monsters toward redemption.
Jennifer Kent’s voice is a cinematic blessing, because unlike many others, she is not a nihilistic torture pornographer. She values humanity and sees good in it. Thankfully, she took this as a chance to peer into the forgotten crevasses of a genre many storytellers have lazily abused and by doing so crafted the unique horror film which is equal parts terrifying and hopeful. Challenge met, Ms. Kent: this is not only great horror but a moving piece of art.