The Bababdook is a horror film but one that is not for many of today's horror fans. As I sat in the cinema with my heart breaking at this film many laughed openly and loudly, for so long that one cinema go-er told them where to go. All I felt afterwards was anger, an infuriating need for them to understand the beauty of this film. As I write this I am watching it on Netflix as it was recently added and if you can I highly, utterly reccommend it. Now if you haven't I will wait and you can come back afterwards so I don't spoil anything. Right, good? Here we go.
This is a film about being a mother, it's a profound story about loss and grief and how difficult life can be when these two things collide. This beautiful story was written and directed by Jennifer Kent, a woman whose next work I eagerly await. The film starts with a worn out mother of a little boy called Sam. Many who have seen this film have called him irritating, annoying, and so on and that's the smartness of this film. You are meant to agree, you are meant to think that she simply can't deal with a child who has a wild imagination, who won't sleep in his own bed for no reason, and who always shouts and screams.
But Sam isn't a child living a normal life. He is a child who is alone, who has grown up with a mother who whilst there in physical form was not there for him emotionally at all. But oh she chastises others when they insult her son, when they refer to him simply as 'the boy'. Yet we can see in her face, in her actions that she is a bit cold and a bit distant. So Sam, in a way only a child can creates a monster. He creates The Babadook. Because of course his mother loves him but she just can't show it because the big, great Babdook won't let her.
We join the story when it has hit its peak, when his story of The Babdook and his promises to protect her when the monster comes has reached her and she begins seeing it too. The Babdook itself is a great towering thing, with slim arms and long fingers, a grey suit, a black hat and a completely spine chilling voice. Sam builds weapons to protect her, his love for her, he is sure, will be enough when the Babadook comes calling. But he can't fight it alone.
His mother, Amelia, works in a home for the elderly. She talks with colleagues, reads out bingo numbers, and she regularly sees her sister. Yet no one can see it. No one can tell what has been happening to her for all these years. No one is there when her eyes linger on kissing couples, when her days off are spent alone at the shopping centre, and in the lonely nights when her self pleasure is interrupted by a scared Samuel. Her sister chastises her regularly - her son scares her daughter with his talks of The Babadook. She doesn't see the reality that her sister is living.
Amelia is alone, lying about Sam being sick, and stopping her son playing with his Dad's things. His late Dad's possessions, which are all locked away in a basement. Sam poignantly declares "He's my Dad too, you don't own him!" and it's in that that we get closer and closer to the truth. We can slowly start to piece together Amelia's life. The film started with a dream of a car crash, of a male passenger, and now we see why Amelia is so alone. Why she struggles with Sam and why he struggles with a mother who screams at him, who hurts him and hates him.
But with the passage of the film it gets clearer and clearer and by the end of the film, after it's horrific climax we learn the full truth. We learn that on the night Sam was born, when Amelia went into labour she was rushed to the hospital and on the way there they crashed and her husband was killed. Amelia had to give birth to young Sam with her husband's death fresh in her mind and her heart. She had to give birth to a piece of him, a piece he would never see or help raise. So her heart broke. She let The Babadook in.
My father when he finished watching the film came to me and said "I don't get it". I was baffled. To me, from the start and from when I watched the short before I watched the film, it was clear. The Babadook represents her depression, but more specifically her post-natal/partum depression. It's important to make the distinction because post-natal depression is a harsh, cruel monster just like The Babadook. It takes your pain and your love for your child and it twists and destroys it and turns it into hate.
To me it was clear as day when Sam is screaming in a car for an imaginary monster to get out whilst his mother is shouting at him, begging him to be normal. It was clear when her sister tells her its time to let her dead husband go, because its been seven years and she should really move on already; as though her sister's loss and grief is nothing but an inconvenience to her. But that's what this film is about: moving on. It's about grief and anger and how people cope but it's also about a mother and her journey to overcome seven years of depression.
The film is perfect in its story writing, in its little hints of what is wrong, and in its beauty on the screen. Amelia's house is blue, a cold and depressing colour, and she is regularly dressed in white whilst her son is dressed in shades of black, blue and grey. It is a slow burner, telling you the story of Amelia and showing you her struggle before it gives you the jumps you were perhaps waiting for. It tells you what the monster is and why it is coming after her and you must sit and watch as helpless as she is as creature begs for her to bring it "the boy".
Then there's the book. The book of The Babadook. It shows up one day, out of the blue, and even after ripping it apart it simply shows up on her doorstep. It, like other films, shows the plot and teases you with where it might end up. It shows the mother killing her dog, then her killing her child, and then herself. We don't know how far that will go but that is what The Babadook does. It teases her, it taunts her, it calls her up and laughs at her. It is the voices in her head daring her to kill her son, to just end his whining. It is the voices in her head telling her to kill herself, to put an end to the monster that is Amelia.
But we don't see the monster either. Not until it's too late. We see Amelia paranoid, we see her yell at her screaming child and nosey neighbours but we don't see what Sam sees until she stands holding a knife, and until she is screaming in the climax, making him so petrified he wets himself. We see that The Babadook and Amelia are one and the same. We see that The Babdook is Sam's mother when she's tired, when she's angry, when she's had enough of him. He knows she loves him but that she can't help being angry because The Babadook is making her.
She kills their dog, rips out her tooth - a physical manifestation of her mental pain, and then she comes for her son. She cuts the phone lines, she screams at Sam that she wishes it was him who had died. She tells him that she wants to smash his face in because that's what post natal depression does. It makes mothers want to kill their own flesh and blood - a real life horror. Her kind neighbour makes her realise she's sick, it makes her realise that she has needed help for a long time and the kind words heal her for a bit. But Sam has clearly heard this before, he's clearly experienced his mother promising better until the monster is back again as he stabs her in the leg. The film starts with Amelia being the unreliable narrator but as her true self is shown it is perhaps Sam's reality we see.
But then, eventually, she overcomes. In the face of danger, in the face of death, in the face of losing her son as well as her husband she learns to let go. She learns to move on, to understand that her husband's death is not Sam's fault and that he needs her to love him. In what broke my heart and made me cry she puts herself between Sam and the monster, she stops him getting to her precious son and screams that if he touches her son she'll "fucking kill" it. She stands up for him and all at once realises that she's been plagued by a terrible dark cloud, a monster that was trying to stop her loving her son.
Yet as the film ends we get a truth about depression, The Babadook hasn't simply gone away but now it lives, amongst her husband's things, and she feeds it. For depression is a process, a long and tiring process that doesn't have to be tackled alone. It is the monster that lives in the basement, the thing that never quite goes away but that you can tame. With help, with love and care and talking, and yes with medication too. The Babadook is a cautionary tale not of the boogeyman, not of imaginary monsters but of real life problems with solutions. The Babadook is not simply a horror movie it's a story about a woman, a mother, and her journey to getting better.
Watch The Babadook now on Netflix or buy it on DVD.
If you feel like you need help, that you understand her pain and have a Babadook of your own then please get help, there are people who care and who can give you what you need to get better. There are many helplines out there for your country for both depression and specifically post-natal depression. As a film blog I don't feel qualified to give specific helplines but google can help. Best of luck.
The film is perfect in its story writing, in its little hints of what is wrong, and in its beauty on the screen. Amelia's house is blue, a cold and depressing colour, and she is regularly dressed in white whilst her son is dressed in shades of black, blue and grey. It is a slow burner, telling you the story of Amelia and showing you her struggle before it gives you the jumps you were perhaps waiting for. It tells you what the monster is and why it is coming after her and you must sit and watch as helpless as she is as creature begs for her to bring it "the boy".
Then there's the book. The book of The Babadook. It shows up one day, out of the blue, and even after ripping it apart it simply shows up on her doorstep. It, like other films, shows the plot and teases you with where it might end up. It shows the mother killing her dog, then her killing her child, and then herself. We don't know how far that will go but that is what The Babadook does. It teases her, it taunts her, it calls her up and laughs at her. It is the voices in her head daring her to kill her son, to just end his whining. It is the voices in her head telling her to kill herself, to put an end to the monster that is Amelia.
But we don't see the monster either. Not until it's too late. We see Amelia paranoid, we see her yell at her screaming child and nosey neighbours but we don't see what Sam sees until she stands holding a knife, and until she is screaming in the climax, making him so petrified he wets himself. We see that The Babadook and Amelia are one and the same. We see that The Babdook is Sam's mother when she's tired, when she's angry, when she's had enough of him. He knows she loves him but that she can't help being angry because The Babadook is making her.
She kills their dog, rips out her tooth - a physical manifestation of her mental pain, and then she comes for her son. She cuts the phone lines, she screams at Sam that she wishes it was him who had died. She tells him that she wants to smash his face in because that's what post natal depression does. It makes mothers want to kill their own flesh and blood - a real life horror. Her kind neighbour makes her realise she's sick, it makes her realise that she has needed help for a long time and the kind words heal her for a bit. But Sam has clearly heard this before, he's clearly experienced his mother promising better until the monster is back again as he stabs her in the leg. The film starts with Amelia being the unreliable narrator but as her true self is shown it is perhaps Sam's reality we see.
But then, eventually, she overcomes. In the face of danger, in the face of death, in the face of losing her son as well as her husband she learns to let go. She learns to move on, to understand that her husband's death is not Sam's fault and that he needs her to love him. In what broke my heart and made me cry she puts herself between Sam and the monster, she stops him getting to her precious son and screams that if he touches her son she'll "fucking kill" it. She stands up for him and all at once realises that she's been plagued by a terrible dark cloud, a monster that was trying to stop her loving her son.
Yet as the film ends we get a truth about depression, The Babadook hasn't simply gone away but now it lives, amongst her husband's things, and she feeds it. For depression is a process, a long and tiring process that doesn't have to be tackled alone. It is the monster that lives in the basement, the thing that never quite goes away but that you can tame. With help, with love and care and talking, and yes with medication too. The Babadook is a cautionary tale not of the boogeyman, not of imaginary monsters but of real life problems with solutions. The Babadook is not simply a horror movie it's a story about a woman, a mother, and her journey to getting better.
Watch The Babadook now on Netflix or buy it on DVD.
If you feel like you need help, that you understand her pain and have a Babadook of your own then please get help, there are people who care and who can give you what you need to get better. There are many helplines out there for your country for both depression and specifically post-natal depression. As a film blog I don't feel qualified to give specific helplines but google can help. Best of luck.
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