The Babadook

Abstract

What is interesting about Kent's film, however, is the overwhelming emphasis on the return of the repressed, drawing an overt connection between supernatural and psychological haunting; or in other words, the idea that what is perceived as supernatural haunting is actually a result of psychological trauma. The opening scene is a disorientating, dream-like sequence in which Amelia relives the moment her husband was killed in a car accident as he drove her to hospital to give birth to their son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The claustrophobic feeling of the film increases as the story progresses, focusing almost exclusively on the mother-son dyad and their interaction with the book, with the action being situated for the most part in their unnecessarily large, but suitably creepy Victorian house.

The Babadook (Dir. Jennifer Kent) Australia 2014

Causeway Films/Screen Australia

(This review contains spoilers)

'For me, the entry point was the idea of facing the unfaceable', says director Jennifer Kent of her 2014 debut film The Babadook.1 Arguably the backbone of every horror film or fiction ever written, the idea of 'facing the unfaceable' is hardly a revolutionary approach in terms of genre. What is interesting about Kent's film, however, is the overwhelming emphasis on the return of the repressed, drawing an overt connection between supernatural and psychological haunting; or in other words, the idea that what is perceived as supernatural haunting is actually a result of psychological trauma. This has led many reviewers to posit that the real monster in the film is not Kent's antipodean bogeyman, the Babadook, but rather the repressed grief of the main characters that is embodied by the figure.

The plot centres on widowed single mother Amelia (Essie Davis), who is traumatised by the death of her husband seven years previously. The opening scene is a disorientating, dream-like sequence in which Amelia relives the moment her husband was killed in a car accident as he drove her to hospital to give birth to their son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). The film draws the reader into Amelia's daily grind - her mundane job, her difficult, demanding son, her self-centred sister, and her overall lethargy with life. Davis's portrayal of the harassed single mother is convincing, as the viewer begins to sympathise with her manifestly un-maternalistic impulses. During their nightly bedtime-story ritual, Samuel pulls the eponymous book from the bookshelf: The Babadook. The striking red cover of the book stands out in stark contrast to the grey-blue visual tone of the film, which Kent originally considered shooting in black and white. The rhyming narrative contained within the picturebook becomes increasingly disturbing as Amelia reads on, shifting from the initial depiction of the Babadook as a friendly but shadowy figure, to that of a malignant, lurking predator in a matter of pages. The refrain 'you can't get rid of the Babadook' becomes a sinister incantation, coupled with the repeated summons 'baba ba-dook-dook-dook', three sharp knocks that indicate the Babadook's desire to 'get in'. The claustrophobic feeling of the film increases as the story progresses, focusing almost exclusively on the mother-son dyad and their interaction with the book, with the action being situated for the most part in their unnecessarily large, but suitably creepy Victorian house. The book itself undergoes various forms of destruction: it's hidden only to reappear on the bookshelf; it's shredded and binned only to materialise on the doorstep, crudely taped back together with a few additional pages prophesying Amelia's filicide (which by this stage, the viewer is also considering!); finally, it's burned by Amelia in the classic cathartic act of exorcism. But, of course, the Babadook is not so easily expunged from their lives, as the book suggestively reminds us: 'the more you deny me, the stronger I get'.

The film is consciously folkloric in theme and tone, with Kent herself admitting that the word 'Babadook' was deliberately crafted to evoke the sort of gobbledegook name that a child would invent for a monster. One interviewer quotes Kent as stating that her objective was to 'create a myth in a domestic setting', and that 'even though it happened to be in some strange suburb in Australia somewhere, it could have been anywhere [...] I'm very happy, actually, that it doesn't feel particularly Australian'.2 Kent's disavowal of the film's Australian provenance strikes me as particularly odd in that the film seems to be very much informed by its locale. Indeed, how could it not be, given that it features an exclusively white, middle-class Australian cast of characters, worth noting, in this regard, as they are strikingly juxtaposed with the black figure of the Babadook. The word Babadook itself, in fact, is evocative of Aboriginal etymology, similarly constructed using a combination of elongated vowels and hard g/k sounds. Although the Babadook is entirely of Kent's invention, she nevertheless roots it deliberately in a mythology, with the book itself being the material example of this. This would seem to contradict the assertion that the film is placeless, given that myths are typically deeply culturally inscribed and inherited. Myths are also perpetuated primarily, if not exclusively, through narrative means, again signposted by the book as a haunted object, or rather, an object that induces haunting through its narrative. Certainly, if nothing else, the setting is a refreshing re-orientation away from the ubiquitous American backdrop of much contemporary horror cinema.

Considered in light of these elements - the white, suburban setting, the folkloric aspect, the Aboriginal trace - the form of possession that the Babadook takes assumes a particularly racial quality. The book lingers on the image of 'the Babadook growing right under your skin', suggesting that this entity is externally infectious but also develops from within. This is not unlike the relation between supernatural and psychological haunting, each being informed by the other in that externalised, supernatural haunting is often configured as the result of some subjective trauma. It could be argued that the shadowy figure of the Babadook, the silhouette of whom is visible in the background of many shots, represents the Aboriginal, the Australian Other, the shadowy figure that haunts the white Australian consciousness as a result of collective cultural trauma, a legacy of colonialism. The entity is imbibed and later abjected by Amelia, entering and exiting through her mouth. As she vomits a black substance onto the basement floor - the basement being the place where all Amelia's dead husband's things are kept, and psychologically evocative of the unconscious, of course - it stains her skin in the process, a further indication of a racial subtext, or perhaps more generally suggestive of how we bear the marks of psychological experiences, subjective or otherwise.

However you interpret The Babadook, the film offers some genuinely good scares without resorting to cheap jump tactics, gradually drawing the viewer in and building the terror to a climactic crescendo. Though the conclusion is somewhat dissatisfying, there is an acknowledged return to the classic horror-movie format here in terms of the haunted-house setting, the folkloric bugbear, and the eventual reunification of a fractured family unit. Coupled with this, the visual tone and eerie soundtrack add a pleasing stylistic touch that is so often absent from big-budget horrors. It is somewhat reminiscent of cult classic Donnie Darko (2001) in this regard, blurring the boundary between psychological and supernatural projections, while maintaining an ethereal aesthetic that eschews cliché. With such high expectations following this debut, it will be interesting to see what Kent's imagination conjures up next.

Aoife M. Dempsey

Footnote

1 Jennifer Kent quoted in an interview by Tara Brady, 'The Babadook: A Truly, Madly, Creepy Film Debut', The Irish Times (17 October 2014), <http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/film/the-babadook-a-truly-madlycreepy-film-debut-1.1966224> [accessed 10 March 2015].

2 Jennifer Kent in interview with Ryan Lamble, 'Jennifer Kent Interview: Directing The Babadook', Den of Geek (13 October 2014), <http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/the-babadook/32451/jennifer-kent-interviewdirecting-the-babadook> [accessed 10 March 2015].