Jennifer Kent's 2014 horror hit The Babadook has plenty to say about grief and the exhaustion
of motherhood, while also being just plain scary.
Part of the movie's appeal is its moody, ambiguous ending.
If it's in a look or in a book, you can't get rid of the Babadook, but you can understand
it.
The Babadook opens on mother Amelia experiencing the traumatic event that underlines the entire
film: her husband Oskar's death in a car accident, while driving to the hospital for the birth
of their son, Samuel.
It's easily read as a flashback or a horrible nightmare, but it's just as fair to say that
the accident is the only event in her life that has mattered for the past six years.
When she falls onto the bed in the opening scene, it's as if those years have only been
a dream.
Our first glimpse of Samuel is him waking up Amelia.
It's a metaphor for a theme that echoes throughout.
Amelia is sleepwalking through her days and marking the hours until the dark times fade,
but she's entirely stuck on Oskar's death.
That event is so intertwined with Samuel's birth that she struggles to be the mother
that he needs her to be.
And unfortunately for her, he's not an easy child to raise.
If dealing with crippling grief and an unruly child weren't enough, the title monster soon
makes an appearance when Samuel finds Mister Babadook, a book that's appeared mysteriously
on his bookshelf.
Although Samuel is initially excited for Amelia to read it to him, that excitement quickly
turns to fear once they begin.
The book describes a horrible monster called the Babadook that invades its victim's thoughts
and home and is impossible to banish.
"Does it live under the bed?
Mom?
Mommy!"
The Babadook burrows in deep and soon becomes a constant source of fear for both Samuel
and Amelia.
Samuel's behavior intensifies as he suffers from insomnia and persistent nightmares that
the Babadook is inside the house.
Amelia's own insomnia gets worse, and their fragile relationship is stretched to the breaking
point.
The Babadook is a potent metaphor for all sorts of mental ailments, from postpartum
depression to overwhelming grief.
Part of the reason that the monster works so well as a metaphor is that Amelia doesn't
have the strength to ask for help.
In the literal sense, it seems like she's being attacked by a horrible monster that's
invisible and seemingly everywhere all the time.
In the metaphorical sense, she's struggling with violent urges towards her son.
In either case, she can't possibly ask for help and sound remotely stable.
"All children see monsters."
"Not like this."
Amelia and Samuel become steadily more isolated from everyone as the Babadook grows more and
more powerful.
Whatever sleep Amelia was able to grasp before becomes nonexistent after it invades the house.
In terms of visual design, the Babadook owes equal influence to German Expressionism and
the work of writer-artist Edward Gorey.
The creature is all jagged corners and suffused with a slick, oily blackness that blends into
the walls.
German Expressionism was an artistic movement interested in exploring highly stylized stories
that often dealt with themes of insanity and betrayal.
During her insomnia-fueled TV marathons, Amelia watches watches some German Expressionist
films.
The Mister Babadook book, meanwhile, is strongly influenced by Gorey's thick linework and gently-misshapen
figures.
These references aren't just an artistic flourish.
They give both Amelia and the audience a form with which to categorize the Babadook.
In classic German Expressionist style, the monster is both an actual, true monster and
also an imaginary visualization of Amelia's exhaustion and mental illness.
Amelia and Samuel eventually manage to defeat the Babadook by banishing it to the cellar.
At this point, Amelia seems more energetic and awake than we've ever seen her.
She's caring and warm towards Samuel, and the harsh editing and sound mixing that characterized
Samuel's temper tantrums earlier in the film are completely gone.
It seems like a happy ending, until we see why Samuel was gathering earthworms from their
garden.
Amelia takes the worms down to the Babadook, which is still living in the cellar.
It nearly attacks her, but she manages to calm it down.
Although she's shaken when she returns to Samuel in the backyard, it's a far cry from
her earlier experiences with the monster.
Just as the book repeated so insistently, you can't get rid of the Babadook, but it
turns out that you can live with it.
It's still in the basement, and it's still dangerous, but it's a thing that Amelia can
live with now that she's stopped denying it.
The end of the movie sees Amelia acknowledging the Babadook as a permanent presence in her
and Samuel's lives.
Giving herself the room and time to feed her grief lets her be awake, really awake, for
the first time that we've seen in the film.
One of the most important lines of dialogue comes right before Amelia goes into the cellar
to feed the Babadook.
"Am I ever gonna see it?"
"One day.
When you're bigger."
If the Babadook represents the grief that Amelia feels over Oskar's death, then Samuel
will have to eventually reckon with it, too.
He might not have ever known his father enough to mourn him the way his mom has, but that
grief is waiting in the wings for when he's older.
This also fits the idea that the Babadook represents mental illness, as many forms are
hereditary.
It's likely that Samuel will one day have to battle the same monsters, figurative and
literal, that Amelia's struggled against.
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