People who have been tuned into the news from film festivals all over the world likely have heard the buzz about “The Babbadook,” the feature film debut of Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent. It has won 16 awards including four in the Horror Features category for best actor, best actress, best screenplay and best picture at the Austin Fantastic Fest.
A domestic horror story, “The Babbadook,” also is an emotionally unnerving exploration into grief and the debilitating effects it can have on a person when it is suppressed.
Kent based this movie on a short film she did earlier, “Monster,” and with funding from Kickstart was able to develop a full-length feature.
In interviews, Kent — a fan of horror movies since childhood — has said “The Babbadook” was influenced by the early silent horror films, along with the works of Roman Polanski, such as “Repulsion,” and David Lynch. In fact, she uses footage from creepy silents like clips from Georges Melies’ movies to enhance the spookiness of her film.
In “The Babbadook,” Amelia (Essie Davis) is a widowed mother trying to cope with raising her six-year-old son, Sam (Noah Wiseman), and it has not been easy. Sam has some obvious problems. He is socially isolated, prone to violence, and each night wakes his mother, claiming there are monsters under his bed and in his closet. One of the causes of Sam’s anxieties is a pop-up book titled “Mister Babbadook,” featuring a character that Sam is convinced has invaded their home.
Initially, Sam is presented as an absolute terror, screaming, devising weapons and wearing Amelia down with his constant need for attention. Seeing the Babbadook book as a bad influence, she discards it, but like the creepy doll Annabelle, it reappears in the house.
As the movie progresses, Kent’s script challenges the viewers into questioning who really is more unstable — Amelia or Sam. Given the circumstances that led to the death of Amelia’s husband, serious issues may be simmering in the mother-son relationship.
Thus, an ambiguity arises as to who is more vulnerable to the psychological impact of the Babbadook book — mother or son. The pages of the book, although on screen only a few seconds at a time, are darkly disturbing, with illustrations designed by stop-motion animator Alex Juhasz, who won an Emmy for his opening credit sequences on Showtime’s “United States of Tara.”
Before long, Amelia is unable to convince Sam that Babbadook is not real because her own sense of reality is slipping and she begins a descent into madness.
Kent has said suppression of emotions was the underlying theme of “The Babbadook,” exploring Amelia’s attempt to keep her life together without a complete emotional breakdown. The result is a terrifying and gradually billowing inability to distinguish between what is real and what is not
Kent as the script writer and Davis as the actress have collaborated on making Amelia empathetic. She does things that are compassionate while also engaging in selfish and irresponsible behavior, yet given what she is enduring it is difficult to judge her harshly.
Meanwhile, Wiseman, the son of a child psychologist, is a marvel, as he evolves from what seems to be a candidate for serious therapy into a basically sweet and caring child, terrified of the Babbadook but motivated by love to do what he can to protect his mother. The death of his father is something he can only absorb in an abstract way. He brings up it casually and in a detached way, as if dismissing it as one of those things in life. Yet he too seems to be suppressing his true emotional feelings about being fatherless.
“The Babbadook,” now available on pay per view while its DVD/Blu-Ray release is yet to be announced, is a well-constructed and ably acted view of a personal tragedy that metamorphoses into a dark and frightening psychological episode. In the end, Kent leaves it up to the viewers to decide if indeed the nightmare was real, and if it was, will it ever be over.
