A complex movie monster
As Tolstoy said, “every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And some forms of unhappiness are more frightening than others. The Australian horror film The Babadook, by Jennifer Kent, centers on a mother (Amelia) and son (Samuel) seven years after the death of their husband and father, Oskar—a death that occurred while rushing Amelia to the hospital for Samuel’s birth.
When the superbly acted film begins all Amelia and Samuel have is grief, loneliness, and each other. This grief has “islanded” them—with failures both institutional and familial contributing to their solitude. Yet their isolation is understandable. Grief has made Samuel sickeningly needy and even dangerous. He brings a homemade crossbow to school and breaks his cousin’s nose at her birthday party. The loss has made Amelia depressed and exhausted. “I just need to sleep” is her almost liturgical lament. Grief acts as a twisted gravity, only pulling in more pain, more loneliness.
But terror slips into their lives with the appearance of a children’s pop-up book and the monster it is named after, Mister Babadook. The haunting starts with eerie tricks but quickly becomes vicious: chilling calls, pounding knocks at the door, glass in their dinners, shadows filled with the undertaker-esque monster and his spiked hands.
