The Babadook

A horror movie sustained by rich metaphors and some excellent acting

This is a horror film only in genre. It is about a disturbed relationship between a mother and her son, at times so unhinged that the mother wishes her 6-year-old dead. Apparently, little Samuel was born the same day that his father was killed in an accident and so his birthday is forever connected to the day Amelia became a widow.

The ‘Babadook’, a monster that comes to life from a children’s book that Amelia (Essie Davis) reads to Samuel (Noah Wiseman), is the ogre of the horror genus, but actually functions as a metaphor for the dysfunctional bond between the two. The boy is hyper active and is armed to the teeth with home-made weapons to battle the ‘Babadook’. But what he is really battling in the movie is the devil in the mind of his mother.

Amelia has lost all focus at work and begs her doctor for tranquiliser pills that she pops. Often she seems to display symptoms of schizophrenia— hearing voices in her head and seeing shadows on the wall—and writer and director Jennifer Kent keeps you in uneasy qualm through the narrative. Are you seeing and hearing a psychotic woman? Or is there really a ‘Babadook’ in the house?

On another level, you could look at the film as reflecting the trauma of a single, working mother with very little money. A consumer society that triggers conformism could then be the ‘Babadook’. Because it encourages such interpretations, the film is interesting. But because it is designed as a two-character movie, the experience turns claustrophobic.

Eventually, The Babadook goes round and round in the same circle that it invents and you see no new vision emerging . The film is literate, and the transitions and sound edits are well done. The acting of mother and son is excellent. The ideas that the film raises are curious. But, unfortunately, there is no emotional residue that you take away from the movie.

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Ajit Duara