"If it's in a word or it's in a book, you can't get rid of the Babadook."
"Jennifer Kent wants you to know that it’s okay to be afraid. If fear is a choice, the Australian filmmaker is convinced it’s dangerous not to choose it. All the same, if you buy a ticket to her first feature, she’s happy to take care of things from there.
Loosely extrapolated from Kent’s 2005 short “Monster,” The Babadook is the story of single mother Amelia (Essie Davis), whose husband was killed in a car accident on the way to the hospital when she was in labor seven years earlier. Amelia is hanging on by a thread when the film begins, and the increasingly violent behavior exhibited by her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) isn’t making it any easier for her to maintain a brave face. But the façade doesn’t really begin to crack until Amelia reads Samuel the wrong bedtime story. The hardbound book Mister Babadook is the rhyming tale of an insidious, unstoppable monster, brought to life with pop-up illustrations that owe as much to James Wan as to Edward Gorey. Needless to say, The Babadook isn’t content to stay on the page.
A hit at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, where IFC Midnight quickly scooped up the distribution rights, The Babadook is a hauntingly humane portrait of grief and repression in the guise of a ridiculous creature feature. The Babadook is one of the scariest horror movies in recent memory because Kent possesses a preternatural command of her craft, but it’s one of the most satisfying horror movies of the decade because she has a rare faith in what the genre can aspire to and achieve. Her mastery of sudden jolts and slow chills is a pleasure to watch, and its refreshing to see a contemporary horror film with such a keen eye for composition. But Kent never loses sight of how scares work best when they’re used as a means to an end. Encouraged to confront our fears, The Dissolve sat down with the filmmaker in New York City, where The Babadook recently played in the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s New Directors / New Films festival.
[Editor’s note: This interview discusses elements of the film’s ending in broad terms; the spoiler-averse are advised to tread carefully.]
