The Babadook

The movie The Babadook best exemplifies the fear of the unknown. In the movie a widower and her son are haunted by the supernatural Babadook who slowly destroys their lives. Horror movies fixate on phobias and this movie prominently features the phobia of the dark. For most of the movie the Babadook is camoflaged by shadows, which is one of the main ways of obscuration in horror. Most scenes take place at night leaving us uneasy and wondering if the Babadook is hiding in the shadows. This is part of a larger attempt by the movie to keep its namesake monster as obscured as it can, which leaves us wondering what the Babadook really is. We often see his shadow or his outline in the dark, but it isn’t until he appears in an old black and white television program that we see his true form. Even when he is not obscured by the dark he was obscured by video distortion in the television. There are times when the viewer believes they can see the Babadook in broad daylight, but these are simply instances of priming. The movie will make it seem like a coat and hat hanging on the wall are the Babadook in order to make us let our guard down when we later see the outline of the Babadook’s signature look. An example of this is when the mother goes to the police station and looks at a coat rack. Previously, the movie was only priming us, but this time we let our guard down and it really is the Babadook on the coat rack. This priming creates one of the most important feelings in a psychological horror film, the feeling of confusion. The viewer doesn’t understand what the monster really is, its ultimate goals for the family, why it is stalking them, or when it will appear. The longer the viewer stays in this state of uncertainty the longer the tension is built up. The Babadook dedicates most of the movie to building up the tension and the fear of what the Babadook intends to do with the mother and son. The long waits between tense scenes make those few times where we do see the Babadook far more impactful. For most of the movie the viewer does not believe the Babadook is real because only the child can see it. As the film progresses we start catching more glimpses and aggressive sightings until the mother cannot ignore the issue and it all bubbles over. This tension pays off at the end when she is possessed by the Babadook and kills her dog before being trapped and cured by her son. Another great way they introduce tension is with sound. During scenes of building tension the movie is dead silent leaving the viewer on edge waiting for a tension breaking moment, but often times nothing happens leaving us worried about a possible scare. The opposite happens when the tension is finally broken as the music rises in volume expressing an appearance of the Babadook or other critical moment. In some scenes the Babadook may not be noticed until the music signifies its presence such as in the scene where it appears in the neighbors closet. The voice of the child also contributes to the sound of the movie. He often screams and whines which tires out the viewer just as it tires out the mother. The story of the Babadook is a parallel to the feelings the family feels after the death of the father. The Babadook comes around the anniversary of his death and even takes his form at the end of the movie. The mother takes the anger she gets from the Babadook out on her child as if she is angry that her husband died while taking her to the hospital when she was giving birth to him. The ending scene where the mother feeds the Babadook worms in the basement shows that the pain will never leave, but she now has control of it and won’t let it possess her as it did before.