The Babadook

In director Jennifer Kent's unsettling horror film, The Babadook, we are introduced to Amelia, a single mother living in a Melbourne house with her six-year-old son, Samuel. The house itself is a labyrinth of corridors and rooms, each one heavy with the memories of Amelia's past. Her husband, Oskar, died suddenly in a car accident three years ago, leaving Amelia to care for their son on her own. The family's dynamics are strained, with Amelia struggling to cope with her grief and Samuel dealing with the anxiety that comes with losing a parent at such a young age. When Samuel's birthday arrives, Amelia gifts him a children's book titled "Mister Babadook", which tells the story of a monster that appears in the night, shrouded in darkness and terrorizing its victims. As the days pass, Samuel becomes increasingly obsessed with the Babadook, convinced that the monster is lurking in the shadows, waiting to claim him. Amelia is torn between her desire to comfort her son and her frustration with his irrational fears. She tries to reassure him that there is no such thing as the Babadook, but Samuel becomes convinced that the monster is a tangible threat. As the relationship between Amelia and Samuel becomes increasingly toxic, the boundary between reality and fantasy begins to blur. The couple's nightly routine consists of Amelia reading bedtime stories, but when I went to include The Babadook, she feels an inexplicable sense of dread, as if the character has taken on a life of its own. Meanwhile, Samuel's behavior becomes more erratic, with his anxieties manifesting in disturbing dream sequences. One night, Amelia succumbs to Samuel's desperate pleas to read The Babadook one last time. As the words paint a vivid picture of the monster, the room around them begins to darken, and the air thickens with an oppressive presence. It is as if the Babadook himself has come to life, sensing the couple's desperation and feeding off their emotions. The boundaries between reality and fantasy are erased as the story moves swiftly into the realm of horror. Ominous noises echo through the corridors, forcing Amelia to question her own sanity and the psychological stability of her son. When she is tasked with caring for Samuel through the dark, wintry nights, the burden becomes increasingly overwhelming, her exhaustion compounded by her persistent emotional struggle to come to grips with her loss. As the tensions escalate between Amelia and Samuel, the tone of the film shifts, illuminating cracks in the mother-son bond that have grown increasingly evident over time. Through her own fears of entrapment and confusion, it is revealed that Amelia has never successfully coped with Oskar's sudden passing - locked away, as Samuel now sees things - behind the façade of motherly devotion and caring calm. Moreover, we start to see visions of Amelia's nightmares coming to life: vivid terror-filled scenarios that mock her struggling ability to cope. No one is left alone, not even in dreams, in this fevered living room where no one has room for an anchor in the mayhem of terrorising anguish brought on by a disorienting sense of claustrophobia she dreads even worse still seeing on her terrified son. It becomes increasingly difficult for Amelia to distinguish between the world and her own inner turmoil. Her perceptions become warped, and her need for escape is met by the Babadook's insidious presence. She lies to her friends and neighbors about what she perceives and refuses to face reality due to facing the abyss head-on that frightfully whispers its malevolent desires through midnight bedrooms where the family's internal terror lives in the very same corridors. Kent works to effectively keep audience's understanding of mental fragmentation - in making Amelia question whether she really encounters the Babadook or if these events were merely hallucinations in the face of her anguish - by visually and thematically hinting at the mental states that seem entirely clear. Through this, Kent tells us something entirely different. No external terror awaits the two people. But indeed inner furies exist so perfectly captured here to mercilessly assail their frail fortress of delusion into shards, for if their mind alone screams their entire world: horror for Amelia lies in the lost parts of her own conscience that she desperately needs to retain in order to hold on to her still remaining grip on reality. This is not entirely about facing her fears; the universe of confusion, more fundamentally the loss the heart of love was ripped from her so ruthlessly far ahead to confront a heart still feeling grief, was something a grieving mother remains tormented with.