Horror thrillers have come a long way from delivering low-budget scares and predictable plots. Now, the genre has shifted towards exploring more human emotions and the personal demons that just about everyone carries around. It’s not just only about scaring audiences anymore — it’s about holding up a mirror to society’s fears and the secrets people often try to hide. Obviously, horror films are designed to frighten, yet only a handful go beyond the usual horror blueprint to explore deeper, more personal fears. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook is one of those few.
The film taps into real anxieties people face on a daily basis and turns them into something really unsettling. Overall, the film has this creepy, gloomy vibe that viewers can’t shake off. It’s not just another cliche horror film. It explores grief, layered emotions and real life inner fears that are as relatable as they come.
What Is ‘The Babadook’ About?
Image Credit: Umbrella Entertainment
Set in Australia and partly funded by the government, The Babadook follows Amelia, an exhausted widow and single mother. Her son, Samuel, believes a monster from a mysterious pop-up book is haunting them. At first, Amelia dismisses it as his imagination, but after she reads the book to him one night, she becomes disturbed by the book and its mysterious appearance. As the story progresses, strange occurrences take place. Soon, she’s wrestling with both her son’s erratic behaviour and her own fears while this creepy monster threatens to destroy what little sanity she has left.
Essie Davis delivers a powerful performance as Amelia. She expertly portrays Amelia’s exhaustion and her slow descent into what looks like madness. The film was well-received by horror fans and critics alike, not just because its truly scary but for its deeper themes of grief and mental struggle. Today, it’s a story that captures the sides of grief and motherhood that many films, particularly horror films, don’t.
‘The Babadook’ Leaves a Subtle but Unshakable Grip on the Mind
Image Credit: Umbrella Entertainment
Fear comes in different forms. There are some triggered by scares in real time and there are those that situated deep in the mind. The kind that isn’t hidden or inflicted by a scary figure but follows you literally everywhere. The Babadook taps into these deeper fears. It’s about fear of madness, grief, and memories that can’t be ignored, no matter how much one tries. That’s what makes the film so unsettling. The Babadook isn’t just a monster; it’s a looming presence that feeds on fear. Its unpredictable nature pushes Amelia to the edge where the line between reality and sanity is blurry.
Furthermore, the constant visual of the pop-up book makes every scene feel more like a disturbing psychological thriller than just a regular horror story. By wrapping up its story in themes of grief and unresolved trauma, the film digs into the ways we try and often fail to manage our losses. The Babadook itself becomes a representation of how bottled-up pain eventually finds a way out, often when people are least ready for it. The world, after all, isn’t built for facing these things head-on. Society tells people to “move on” or “get over it,” but The Babadook dares to challenge this notion.
How The Babadook Holds Up Against Haunting Classics
Image Credit: Umbrella Entertainment
Since the inception of horror films, there have been countless films where the characters are possessed by demons and ghosts, so there’s typically a formulaic pattern they follow. However, The Babadook stands out for obvious reasons. Compared to the typical “haunted” horror film, it’s not entirely based on demons or evil spirits, it roots its horror in human emotion. While classics like The Exorcist and The Shining were big hits thanks to their supernatural premise and impressive visuals, The Babadook uses grief to inspire fear. Where The Exorcist has a demon throwing a possessed girl around like a rag doll, The Babadook uses the suffocating presence of Mister Babadook to symbolize the kind of pain that can’t simply be exorcised.
But just because The Babadook skips the flashy visuals doesn’t mean it lacks punch, as a matter of fact it’s quite the opposite. This film lingers in a way many horror movies don’t. Where those films thrive on external figures inflicting fear, The Babadook turns inward, digging into the fears people tend to avoid. It’s like comparing a rollercoaster ride to a slow-brewing storm. They are both great, but have completely different thrills. At the end of the day, The Babadook is proof that sometimes the scariest films aren’t the ones with the bloodiest scenes or the flashiest effects.
To experience The Babadook‘s haunting atmosphere, it is currently streaming on Netflix.
