Classic Movie Review: 'The Babadook' is a Pride Month Movie

The Babadook (2014)

Directed by Jennifer Kent

Written by Jennifer Kent

Starring Essie Davis

Release Date May 22nd, 2014

Published June 28th, 2024

Until a recent edition of my podcast, the I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast, available wherever you listen to podcasts, I was not aware that The Babadook, the incredible low budget horror movie that became an underdog smash in 2014, had an connection to the LGBTQ community. Then, as we were deciding on a classic for the final week of Pride Month, my co-host, Jeff Lassiter, suggested The Babadook. And, I was puzzled.

I wondered if writer-director Jennifer Kent was connected to the LGBTQ community or perhaps star Essie Davis. But, I have seen no indication of either speaking about their personal lives over the past 10 years. That's when Jeff explained a funny anecdote that, for reasons unexplained, Netflix had included The Babadook in a collection of Pride Month Movies. This led to members of the LGBTQ community embracing The Babadook as a pride movie in an ironic or sarcastic manner that became a genuine embrace. It became a meme in the LGBTQ horror community that the monster itself, the Babadook, of the title was queer.

As Wikipedia explains, even the character of The Babadook carries elements of LGBTQ representation. People have described the monster as dramatic and chaotic, stereotypical and surface level traits of LGBTQ people. And, in a dark aside, The Babadook is unwelcome in its home and family. If you can't understand that kind of dark humor, please understand that it is meant only as a sarcastic observation about how some families refuse to welcome and embrace their LGBTQ family members. The Babadook contains multitudes of meanings and can be rendered symbolic of many things. It's bleak, it's gallows humor, but it is funny when you really consider it.

Putting aside the loose, somewhat sarcastic place that The Babadook holds in the LGBTQ community, The Babadook is among the best horror movies of this young century. It's a gripping, genuinely terrifying exploration of trauma, grief, and the swirling cauldron of dark feelings that come with feeling ambivalent about being a parent. Though most parents don't talk about it, or won't ever admit it, it's relatively common to look at your own child and not feel connected to them. But it doesn't change your obligation to them or your desire to find that connection. The Babadook is the rare movie, not just a horror movie, but movie in general, to tackle this emotionally fraught subject.

The Babadook stars Essie Davis as Amelia, a put-upon single mom dealing with an increasingly troubled child. Amelia’s son Samuel (Noah Wiseman, delivering a full bodied and impressive performance for such a young actor), like many typical children before him, believes he has a monster under his bed. This fact has kept his mother up late many nights as we join the story in attempts at reassurance. Samuel’s monster takes on a name from a bizarre children’s book that Amelia does not recall having purchased, a book called ‘The Babadook.’

‘The Babadook’ is not, in fact, a children’s book. Rather it is an illustration of upcoming events that will change as events change in Amelia's home. It's a demon possessed thing that foreshadows the shifting dynamic of Amelia's psyche as she comes to terms with her varying traumas. What’s truly clever about The Babadook-the film is how this book and all of the varying cliches of possession/demon horror movies are routed to a single emotional point, the death of Amelia’s husband on the day that Amelia gave birth to Samuel.

There is a very big, deeply fraught metaphor at play in The Babadook. Many mother’s struggle to connect with their own child. For Amelia, her son’s life is tied inextricably to the day her husband died. With no fault of his own, Amelia resents her own child. Amelia has a secret resentment of her son related to the death of her husband. It's a resentment that she feels deeply and desperately guilty for, but also a resentment she cannot simply let go. She can't bring herself to admit that this resentment even exists, though it is present to us in the audience.

As the monstrous Babadook continues to encroach on both Amelia and Samuel, the subtle and not so subtle metaphor is that Amelia needs to admit her resentment, confront how she has treated and mistreated her son based on the trauma she experienced in losing her husband and blaming her son for that loss. She cannot look at Samuel without being reminded of the loss of her husband. The mixture of ambivalence, grief, guilt, and the swirling vortex of how to confront these feelings becomes 'The Babadook,' this terrifying monstrous and threatening presence that seems to come through the walls of the home, eager to consume Amelia and Samuel if given the chance. I promise you, the film is not nearly as blunt with this metaphor as I am describing it.

On a filmmaking level, The Babadook is exceptionally well crafted. The set design and lighting are incredibly evocative and compelling in their deep dark grays and blacks. I also loved the architecture of the home which feels cramped when necessary and overly expansive when its time for a character to make a getaway. Director Jennifer Kent's use of space in The Babadook is superb. She appears to expand and contract the home as needed to build and disperse tension. The home is an extension of Amelia's psyche and thus when she's able to be calm, the home has light and comfort. But always there is that basement, a place reminiscent of the place in her mind where Amelia has tried to lock away her trauma and not deal with it. The movie isn't as blunt with the metaphor as I am making it out to be, I promise. This is merely my blunt reading of the movie.

The sound design and character creation of The Babadook is wonderfully terrifying. The image of the character ‘The Babadook’ is a perfect picture of a childhood nightmares; all sharp edges and darkness. The character seems modeled on Max Schreck’s Nosferatu with a little bit of Danny Devito’s take on The Penguin in Batman Returns. 'The Babadook' monster exists in shadows, it's shape emerges in a way reminiscent of what psychologists call 'Face Pareidolia.' This is when we project a human face on to inanimate things. Staring into the darkness, you see a shape that could be human, as your mind pieces together the puzzle of this shape, a face can emerge. That's incredibly similar to how 'The Babadook' monster comes to life in the movie, a mental projection created simply by our mind trying to give order to something we can't really see and may not actually be there.

For all the terrific filmmaking however, your enjoyment of or appreciation for The Babadook ultimately boils down to just how much you believe in Essie Davis’s performance. I believed it completely. Davis does an extraordinarily complex bit of work here; calling on some very difficult emotional damage to achieve just the right effect. Davis is portraying a mother who is ambivalent about her son, still grief stricken over the loss of her husband six years later, and is, late in the film, clearly losing her grip on reality. That’s a large number of beats to be played and Davis is exceptionally in tune throughout.

Back in 2014, and based on the seemingly silly title and premise I didn’t want to bother with The Babadook. I assumed I had seen this movie before in a dozen other horror movies about childhood monsters come to life. I've certainly grown weary of the American concept of 'The Boogeyman' and that's what I assumed The Babadook would be. Thankfully, The Babadook transcends the genre trash because it is so much richer and exceptionally well written and directed by Jennifer Kent. It's also transcendent of the childhood monster movie because of Essie Davis and a performance of so many layers and so much depth that you don't expect to see in a monster movie. She's not starring in a horror movie, she's starring in a serious drama that just happens to wear the clothes of a horror-monster movie.

The Babadook is the classic on the next I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast. It will drop the week after Pride ends, but it is nevertheless part of a series of classics in the month of June dedicated to movies embraced by the LGBTQ community. My co-host Jeff Lassiter is a loud and proud gay man and I love him for that. I am proud to call myself an ally to the gay community. I have multiple members of the LGBTQ community in my family but even if that weren't the case, I would tell you, members of the LGBTQ community, I love you, I support you and our podcast, The I Hate Critics Movie Review Podcast, is a place that welcomes you. You will find no hatred or bigotry on our show.

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