You Can’t Get Rid of the Babadook…

…nor should you want to.

            I’ll come back to that statement in a bit since it ties into the discussion of the symbolism and “meaning” of Australian director Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014). Speaking literally for the moment, however, I do wish that other horror flicks would take note of how this particular film works. The Babadook is easily recognizable as an entry in the genre, but it is also smartly written and exceptionally well-presented, avoiding many of the cheap tricks that have unfortunately become staples in these types of movies: namely jump scares. The Babadook is creepy, unnerving, and even frightening, but it does it all without resorting to throwing things in your face with a bang. There are moments where audiences will likely expect the usual banging on to occur, only to have Kent resist the temptation. Here is an example (you can jump to 1:34 and stop around 2:08 if you don’t want to see more than this brief snippet): https://youtu.be/zhM4X3cozdI

            In terms of its composition, this scene depends upon a familiar set-up. We’ve got the camera deployed very deliberately here so that our view of what is behind Amelia (Essie Davis) is being obscured. We push in on her face and she begins to turn. We know that there’s something being hidden behind her because of how clingy the camera is being. Even when we’re not right in her face (such as when she first exits the basement and at 1:51 when we cut behind her), the kitchen is still hidden. When we finally see the darkened kitchen doorway at 1:56, we’d be completely justified in expecting something to leap out at us. It’s the perfect moment for it, in fact. Instead, the camera remains steady as the chittering sound that we’ve learned to associate with the presence or influence of the Babadook intensifies and the creature itself emerges from the shadows. We see it coming head on, and even with a quick cut back to Amelia’s terrified face and the aural cue that strikes when the monster flexes its talons, at no point does anything jump out at us with a bang.

            Instead, Kent lets the shadows, the creature’s appearance, the camerawork, and the excellent sound design do their work without exploiting one or the other to get a quick rise out of people. This is the modus operandi of the film. For lack of a more descriptive term, perhaps, it holds steady. The camera is by no means static, but Kent avoids excess. The Babadook is a film that faces terror head-on—which is yet another statement that I’ll have to elaborate upon when I talk about the movie’s themes.

            I personally like The Babadook’s approach to scaring viewers a lot. There are bound to be some people who disagree, though. I know for a fact that there are those who do not like the ending, which feels more like a Grimm fairytale than it does a traditional Western story about horror. It feels altogether more sure of itself and its message than a movie like Sinister (2012), which has its own merits but insists on ending on a jump scare rather than letting the gravity of the events of its final act sit and stew in viewers’ minds.

            Thus far, I have used the terms “horror” and “terror” interchangeably here; however, the 18^th century Gothic novelist Ann Radcliffe actually theorized that they were two different concepts. They were both ways of scaring an audience, but they represented different approaches. In essence, according to Radcliffe’s essay on the subject, horror was all about showing the audience something… horrific. Terror, on the other hand, was about not revealing things and instead stimulating the audience’s imagination. Horror, she thought, was ultimately less effective at scaring people because it could only shock or startle them in ways that were not as lasting as the effects that could be achieved by influencing the imagination.[1]

            The video clip I directed you to previously is an example of both. First, we do not see the Babadook right away. We strongly suspect that it is behind Amelia in some form, but we do not know for sure. The absence of physical evidence, though, puts our imaginations to work trying to anticipate what is in the kitchen. If we scare ourselves, that’s terror. When we see the Babadook itself emerge from the doorway, we’re entering horror territory. Even though we’re still forced to imagine some of the details, the looming shape with its sharp talons is enough of a reveal to horrify us. The encounter continues until the end of the clip, so without giving too much away, let me suggest that it returns to terror again as, after Amelia flees upstairs and barricades herself in another room, the Babadook comes for her again but is entirely unseen. We do not see its body or what it does, so we can only imagine it.

            Now, obviously the horror-terror dichotomy is imperfect (as in the aforementioned scene where we see part of the Babadook but still must imagine the rest of it), and I don’t mean to suggest that there’s no terror in movies that include jump scares. Like I said before, we are familiar enough with the sort of scenes and camera movements that anticipate these moments, and the fear we feel in the process of trying to figure out exactly where the “bang” will come from and what form it will take is likely a form of terror since until the shock actually happens onscreen we are effectively living in our own heads, entertaining and frightening ourselves.

            Where the horror-terror distinction does work very well is in the case of “torture porn”—a sub-genre of horror that depends on gross-out scares (“body horror” if you prefer) that is frightening only because it is so disturbingly physical. The Saw franchise and the Hostel movies fall into these categories. Again, there are definitely moments in those films where the audience feels terror in anticipating the horror to come, but they are known primarily for their use of very obvious, heavy-handed moments of disgust. There’s nothing wrong with body horror (see John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps (2000) for excellent visual and thematic use of it) necessarily, to add another caveat to my growing list; however, I think that Radcliffe was onto something with the distinction between terror and horror, and I think The Babadook does a good job straddling that line.

Use your imagination...

            As I prepare to discuss in greater detail the good and bad qualities of the film and its execution of its themes, it’s only to fair to warn you that spoilers will, out of necessity, follow.

            I previously mentioned the sound design of the film, and I’d like to take a moment to talk a bit more about it. Sound (and, by extension, music) is an important part of the horror movie experience. There are plenty of good examples of how sound cues affect us as viewers, but here’s one I was linked to a couple years ago.

            Remember the romantic comedy Pretty Woman? Well, here is what a trailer for that movie with very different music looks (and sounds) like: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZ2H37m_Yt8

            Even though the clips shown and the ways that they are stitched together is important to creating the appropriate effect, the music that backs them plays an significant role by telling us when we are supposed to feel the tension rise and abate. Jump scares in horror movies are accompanied by the “bang” I keep referring to—the aural cue that complements the sudden appearance of the monster or killer and that makes us more likely to jump. Music helps us figure out what we’re supposed to be feeling at a given moment, and when it is appropriately paired with the right images, it enhances the feelings of fear. In The Babadook, for example, we associate the chittering bug sounds with the cockroaches Amelia thinks that she sees in the kitchen, but we also see the film’s monster skitter like an insect and make a similar sound; therefore, when we hear the insect noises, we don’t think of them as simply ambient—we know that the monster is present in some form, and we feel terror as we imagine where it might be or what its growing influence on Amelia will make her do next.

            There’s another great sound-related moment in The Babadook earlier in the film when the creature is first making its presence felt, and Sam (Noah Wiseman) screams, “Mommy!” from upstairs after peering into his closet. Amelia runs upstairs and finds him hiding under the bed. It took me a moment during this scene to realize that even though Sam was no longer screaming “Mommy!” I was still hearing it for some reason. During this sequence, the music that plays is jarring, somewhat atonal, and sounds like someone is repeating “Mommy!” over and over again. This is significant because it frightens us with its unusual sound, but it is also indicative of the way that Sam’s constant acting out and nagging sticks with Amelia and echoes in her head. Additionally, it suggests the possibility of her growing madness and the surreal quality of the world around her.

            The voice of the Babadook itself has a distorted, croaking quality to it that I think is very effective. On the one hand, it can sound recognizably human (if a bit off) in scenes where Amelia’s deceased husband Oskar appears. On the other, it also has a noticeably breathless, monstrous quality that makes the cry of “Baba dook, dook, dook” creepy. There’s only one sound in the movie that I don’t particularly care for, and unfortunately it’s one that the Babadook makes somewhat regularly. The “shriek” (it’s identified as such by the closed captions) sounds like a generic dinosaur roar—like a sound a pterodactyl on an episode of The Magic School Bus might make.

            Changing gears a bit, the lead actors here inhabit their roles extremely well. Wiseman plays the recognizable role of the “creepy child” well for the first third, while Davis does the “creepy mom” to great effect for the rest. They both convey much of the horror of these parts through their facial expressions, despite being perfectly normal looking human beings otherwise. This characterization is another of the film’s strengths, as it represents both its familiar qualities and its experimentation. We’re familiar enough with the creepy child and the slightly off parent from other scary stories, so it’s easy to accept the early plot developments which suggest that Sam may be the root of the problem here. His asocial behavior, including an insistence on talking to the invisible Babadook and one chilling scene where Amelia finds glass in her soup because “the Babadook did it,” suggests that Amelia’s frazzled appearance and temperament are justified and that the boy will probably be possessed by the creature. The pop-up book Mister Babadook that the pair read even foreshadows this development by showing the monster hovering over a child’s bed screaming, “Let me in!” When the focus later shifts to Amelia’s possession by the creature (and the pop-up changes to reflect this) and we start to see the consequences of her listlessness and depression from her son’s point of view, our expectations are thwarted somewhat. Even though we’ve experienced both these scenarios before, seeing them used in one place (and where one proves to be a red herring) makes their use here more noteworthy and interesting.

            The Babadook is familiar enough when it wants to be. The structure of the plot and the conceit that brings the creature into Amelia and Sam’s lives should both be familiar to regular viewers of horror films. After looking at a specific item (the pop-up book in this case), the horror is essentially invited into the home. The plot then progresses through several nights and days, with the paranormal phenomenon of the nights becoming more overt and involved with time, culminating in a final, longer night when a full-blown attack occurs.

            The feature-length film that is The Babadook is actually an expansion upon Kent’s debut short film from 2005: Monster. If you watch Monster (see link below) after seeing The Babadook, you’ll no-doubt notice some similarities in style, tone, themes, and plot.[2] Monster is in black and white, but Kent has suggested that The Babadook, with its drained-looking central location lacking in color, is still an extension of this visual style.[3] The main characters of the short film are still the same—a mother and a disobedient boy named Sam who is obsessed with killing a monster—but the creature in Monster looks a lot more like the mother, which is appropriate to the themes of both movies but removes some of the ambiguity that the Babadook’s more masculine appearance creates. Also, just for the record and as a bit of a forewarning if you choose to watch the original short film, Monster has a couple “bang” moments that do not exist in The Babadook.

            I have previously made a couple cryptic statements about how one should not want to get rid of the Babadook (partly because one cannot), as well as how the camerawork in the film steadily faces down frightening things rather than cutting to them unexpectedly. These observations are thematically significant to both Monster and The Babadook because both versions of the story end with the mother and son living in the same house with the creature and taking care of it in some capacity. In Monster, it retreats to a closet and is given milk. In The Babadook, it runs to the basement where many of Oskar’s belongings are kept and is fed worms. In both cases, the creature is not defeated or killed (and it does not defeat or kill Amelia and Sam). Instead, when Amelia seizes control of the situation and overpowers the monster’s influence with her own force of will, it flees. The endings of both films suggest that it is possible to live with the creature still in the house, whereas many other horror films either have the structure destroyed, the beast exorcized, or the family fled or dead.

            There is a YouTube edit of the ending of the film (linked below) where a user shortened the film’s ending in a way that eliminates this peaceful co-habitation.[4] Instead, the edit has the screen go black as Amelia reaches out to the Babadook’s deflated clothes, with Sam reciting the line “You can’t get rid of the Babadook” as the credits begin to roll. While this fan version of the ending could be interpreted in a manner similar to that of the original (the Babadook abides, as do Sam and Amelia), it’s altogether more ambiguous in a negative way, suggesting as well that Amelia may become possessed by the creature again and that the cycle will continue. In the actual ending to The Babadook, we see Amelia confront the creature one more time in the basement when she brings it a meal. Again, the creature is hidden (we inhabit its point of view in the scene). We hear it roar and see Amelia react to it with fear, but she ultimately leaves the basement unscathed and the movie ends instead with her sitting together with Sam.

            Obviously, The Babadook (and Monster) is a film about learning to cope with darkness. I say “obviously” because the movie drives the point home quite clearly that Amelia is someone who does not deal with her problems. She simply does not talk about them. She says she has gotten over her husband’s death because she no longer mentions him, but we know from her behavior that she has not moved on. She reacts strongly when Sam talks about Oskar and his death in public, and she keeps all of Oskar’s belongings downstairs while insisting that Sam leave them alone. That the Babadook later manifests as Oskar is hardly a surprise. His death has been the catalyst for Amelia’s depression and ultimately is the way that the Babadook gets a hold on her. In this film, though, the Babadook is both an actual creature (we see Amelia vomit it up from an objective point of view at one point) and a representation of Amelia’s repressed feelings—her depression, but also her sexual frustration which results from her unwillingness to move on from Oskar (and possibly date again) and her responsibilities as a mother which keep her from finding enough time just to masturbate.

            This issue of sexual repression finds an interesting symbol (as well as a connection to another film) in the strange hole filled with cockroaches that Amelia discovers in her kitchen. I was watching the film with a friend, and we both simultaneously came to the conclusion that the hole was probably a piece of Yonic imagery—that is to say, vagina-like or representative of the vagina. The cockroaches suggest decay or neglect, of course. Tellingly, when we see them again during the scene where Amelia and Sam are in the car crash, they seem to be congregating on her skirt. Because the Babadook is closely associated with the sound of these insects, we can infer that there is a sexual component to its symbolism, though it generally stands for everything Amelia refuses to acknowledge or deal with.

            As for the hole in the wall, it bears a startling resemblance to an image from the poster for the Canadian film Thanatomorphose (2012), which falls hard into the category of body horror while also addressing sexual decay through an abusive relationship that starts the literal decomposition of the main character’s body:

The hole from The Babadook.

The hole from Thanatomorphose.

            If there’s a connection between these two films, I am not aware of it at this time.

            The aforementioned issue of Amelia’s sexual frustration, however, is still a result of her unwillingness to engage with a problem and find a solution. She won’t let Sam stay next door with the kindly Mrs. Roach, even though the older woman is good with him and volunteers to help out any way that she can. Likewise, Amelia is unwilling to admit that Sam has behavioral problems, whether they are his alone or stem from her own at-times lackadaisical approach to parenting and repressive attitude toward her late husband and everything associated with him. She breaks down in front of the doctor, but she refuses to be honest or openly acknowledge her problems in front of other people who might be willing to help her.

            As I keep suggesting, the fact that the film ends with the Babadook still around but with Amelia and Sam learning to live with it sends a powerful message about how Amelia’s problems are resolved. We see her opening up more at the ending of the film. She and Sam both agree that there is a monster in their basement, where she had previously (repeatedly) denied the possibility of the creature’s existence, thus indicating her unwillingness to be open with her son about the dark forces exerted on their lives since Oskar died the day that Sam was born. She previously avoided engaging with the issue by holding Sam’s birthday on another day without comment. At the end of the movie, she is celebrating Sam’s birthday on the day of his birth and Oskar’s death. She no longer takes issue with Sam’s openness about his father’s death, and she also begins to involve Mrs. Roach in their lives. She is working through her problems, and the Babadook’s continued existence suggests strongly that she is working toward a solution. Getting over her grief will take time. There is no vanquishing the creature outright (you can’t get rid of it, after all) because these problems that Amelia faces are ones that cannot be overcome immediately.

            The problems of human characters in horror movies are usually resolved fully by the end—either through their death (suggesting that the darkness was too much to handle) or the expulsion, exorcism, or destruction of the evil force (suggesting that darkness can be obliterated). Sometimes the latter types of stories end with a resurgence of the evil force after its seeming defeat, which sends a message similar to The Babadook’s—though because these other films end on that note, they ultimately communicate a message of personal powerlessness and cynicism: the darkness will always return, and next time it will be overwhelming. The fan edit of the ending of The Babadook suggests something similar. Meanwhile, the true ending of the movie strikes a balance. It is altogether more human and even realistic in its portrayal of that darkness. It sends the message that, even if you cannot get rid of a monster, you can deal with it. Darkness is survivable if not conquerable; if it is conquerable, it is a process that takes time. In this regard, The Babadook sends a feminist message of personal empowerment in the face of mental illness or other travails. Trying to bust through to the other side, defeating evil in the process, does not work. Denying that one has been complicit on some level with one’s personal monsters is likewise fruitless. You can’t get rid of the Babadook, but you can learn how to live with it and prevent it from gaining too much power again.

            The emphasis the film places on its resolution and message is what prompts me to consider it a sort of modern fairytale, though that by no means undermines its use of horror and terror. In fact, because The Babadook has something to say and a reason to exist, the fear it creates is more powerful. Given that Kent says that she begins her projects with “an idea or something [she] wants to say first,”[5] the fairytale association seems apt, as those were fun (sometimes grisly, sometimes frightening) tales with something more to them than just the surface-level entertainment value. The Babadook feels like such a story, and I hope that other directors, writers, and producers of similar stories take note of its strengths.  

---

    

Notes:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Radcliffe#cite_note-3 (Summary of Radcliffe’s concept of “terror.” I first encountered it in the class notes for a Gothic literature class; therefore, while this is not a link to the original source, it does seem accurate insofar as I am aware of Radcliffe’s writing on the subject.)

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ospJmDnLSXs (The full short film Monster from 2005, with Thai subtitles… and jump scares)

[3] http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/babadook-director-jennifer-kent-talks-about-women-making-horror-movies/2014/12/12/11dba89a-8082-11e4-9f38-95a187e4c1f7_story.html (Jennifer Kent on women in the film industry, horror films, and making The Babadook)

[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6B97klDxLo (The “alternate” ending of The Babadook—fan edit)

[5] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nyrof7RJip0 (An interview with The Babadook director/writer Jennifer Kent and star Essie Davis)