Babadook is an Australian horror film by Australian director Jennifer Kent that was released in 2014. The story is set in the period after the death of Amelia’s husband, Oskar, in a car crash while they were on their way to the hospital for the birth of their son Samuel. The film is essentially a meditation on the grief and exhaustion that can surround motherhood that is embodied in the mysterious form of the Babadook, a figure that apparently comes to life from a book that is in the house where Amelia and Samuel live. Following is the film Babadook explained.
The film opens with Amelia experiencing, once more, the traumatic death of her husband that underscores the emotional state of the entire film; although six years have passed the audience is led to believe that it could have been yesterday for Amelia even though her son, who wakes her, is now grown up. This theme of Amelia sleepwalking through life until she gets over her loss pervades the entire film and gives it an eerie feeling.
Her son Samuel is presented as a difficult child who requires a lot of energy and patience to parent. He is precocious and constantly throws tantrums. Rather than helping his mother he screams and shouts and builds traps around the house. He’s also expelled from school for bringing a weapon to class. Needless to say he doesn’t help his mother’s psychological condition. And finally, to make matters even worse, he finds a strange book, Mister Babadook, that mysteriously appears on his bookshelf. He excitedly asks his mother to read it to him but this soon turns to fear as the Babadook is revealed as a malign force that once awakened can’t be gotten rid of. Like an unwanted idea that burrows deep in one’s psyche the Babadook soon turns into an object of omnipresent fear for both mother and child.
In the end, the Babadook is revealed as a metaphor for mental illness in all its various forms. Be it the overwhelming grief for the loss of a loved one or the postpartum depression that can occur when a woman gives birth. The reason the Babadook has so much influence on Amelia is that she refuses to ask for help so that her inner demons have complete control of her life; in this case in the Babadook explained who is a monster that is everywhere and cannot be beaten. In the meantime she is struggling with violent urges she feels towards her own son as well as her own psychological disintegration. Once she deals with these issues, so too does the Babadook recede to become merely a scary character in a book.
