The babadook is a monster from the 2014 Australian psychological horror film of the same name.
It centers around a mother and her son who are being stalked by a creature from a bedtime
story called Mr Babadook.
The babadook is a humanoid monster who wears a top hat and torments its victims Safter
they become aware of it’s existence.
But what if the babadook wasn’t just a monster from a children’s pop up book.
What if the babadook was real?
Hello and welcome back to life’s biggest questions, I’m charlotte dobre.
If this is your first time here, smash that subscribe and ask us a question in the comments
below.
And I just wanted to take a quick minute to shout out our sister channel inform overload.
If you need a place to get regular news updates on everything that’s happening on the internet,
and you enjoy videos hosted by me, check out inform overload.
If its in a word, or its in a look, you cant get rid of the babadook.
Thats a somewhat cryptic nursery rhyme that’s essentially the theme of the babadook.
In case you’re wondering, the babadook wasn’t based on any sort of real urban legend, like
many of the other monsters we have talked about on life’s biggest questions.
The Name ‘the babadook’ is an anagram for ‘a bad book’.
The film, the babadook was loosely based off the directors short film called Monster.
So, here’s the deal.
Once you hear about the babadook, he essentially becomes a part of you.
But the theme of the film actually goes a lot deeper than that.
The babadook is essentially a physical manifestation for trauma or emotional grief.
It’s extremely difficult to forget emotional pain, in fact, you can often never get rid
of it, which is why you can never get rid of the babadook.
Some years after experiencing emotional trauma, You might forget for a while, but then something
will make you remember.
A song, a smell, a picture.
And then all the memories come rushing back, and so does the pain.
Sometimes traumatic experiences can be so influential that they become a part of you,
and you’re never the same again.
So imagine that your emotional grief is actually a monster that haunts you whenever you think
about him.
That’s a pretty scary premise for a film, which is exactly why the babadook was so critically
acclaimed.
The characters in the film are also haunted by emotional grief, amelias husband, Sams
father, died.
Just like grief, The babadook uses his influence to force the people he infects to do some
pretty horrendous things.
In the film, the mother Amelia, while being influenced by the babadook, wakes up from
a dream and immediately assaults her son Sam.
She chokes him and ultimately tries to kill him.
But instead of being afraid by all this, Sam knows his mother loves him, so he reaches
out his hand and strokes her cheek.
And then, Amelia stops choking her son.
She turns over and vomits up some sort of black liquid.
But when everything seems to go back to normal, sam says ‘you cant get rid of the babadook’,
he returns.
So we know that the babadook will retreat when you are with kindness.
Which is also similar to how we combat emotional grief.
If someone we love treats us with kindness, it can make us forget our grief for a time.
We also know that the babadook can be distracted by worms, apparently he eats worms?
I don’t know I’m still confused by that part.
If the babadook turned out to be real, you would think that the way to get rid of him
was to destroy all reference to him.
But then, You’ve got a chicken and egg situation.
In order for people to not find out about the babadook, every reference to him, every
book, every article, would have to be burned or deleted.
But then you have to tell people about the babadook so that they know what to get rid
of.
But you can’t get rid of the babadook.
That’s the whole point of the film.
Every time someone thinks about the babadook, he returns.
People who had been affected by him would try to undergo some sort of shock therapy,
to attempt to remove him from their thoughts entirely.
But its very difficult to remove something from your thoughts, especially something as
traumatic as a terrifying monster that makes you do terrible things.
We find out at the end of the film that the only way to deal with trauma, or the babadook,
is to effectively manage it.
Like emotional grief, the babadook would never really go away, you just have to get better
at dealing with his presence.
Like the babadook, you must first accept your grief if a part of you.
Then you must stand up to it, and make the decision to not let it affect all the good
things in your life.
Kindness from loved ones would help you to manage the babadook, and keep him under control.
And also apparently worms.
We have all experienced pain.
We all have all experienced grief.
Its one of the things that makes us human.
But we can’t let grief control us or change us.
We must learn from it, but not let it ruin our lives.
I’ll leave you with that thought.
For now, I’m charlotte dobre and you’ve been watching life’s biggest questions.
If you enjoyed this video, you will absolutely love the playlist that’s clickable on your
screen right now.
And make sure notifications are turned on so you never miss a future episode of life’s
biggest questions.