The creepy true story that inspired Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Babadook’
Jennifer Kent‘s debut film, The Babadook, was critically lauded upon its release in 2014. The psychological horror follows the director’s short film, Monster, created in 2005, which explores the same basic premise of a single mother who is forced to confront the monster her son claims is lurking in their house.
Financed through crowdfunding and Australian government grants, not only is The Babadook a wholly impressive debut but also a fantastic piece of horror that uses the genre to explore important themes of motherhood and grief. Kent used practical effects to create the horrific titular monster, mainly stop motion, inspired by early horror effects used by Georges Méliès and Jean Epstein, particularly drawing influence from The Man in the Beaver Hat character in Tod Browning’s 1927 film London After Midnight.
Contrary to the frequent use of CGI animation in horror, Kent thought, “There can be something really visceral about things created in-camera. You get the feeling there was something there.” She also responded to criticisms of the quality of the special effects, “There’s been some criticism of the lo-fi approach of the effects, and that makes me laugh because it was always intentional. I wanted the film to be all in camera.”
Kent’s approach to special effects mirrors the film’s heavy focus on psychological fear. Whilst the effects look slightly shoddy at times, this only emphasises the paranoia and confusion that leading character Amelia faces. Tormented by repressed grief and loneliness, Amelia must face her fears when her son Sam becomes convinced that the shadowy figure in his pop-up book has come to life. Kent said the film is really about “connecting to that woman and her journey towards staring something nightmarish in the face.”
Although the film’s monstrous antagonist – a storybook creature – feels far away from real life, Kent was actually inspired by a story told to her by a friend, also a single mother like Amelia. Her friend’s child claimed to see a monster in the house, which got the ball rolling in Kent’s imagination. Soon she wrote Monster, which eventually became The Babadook.
By taking the idea of a mysterious figure haunting a child and his mother, Kent turned the story into a metaphor for the repressed emotions that nearly everyone will experience at some point in their life. That’s what makes the film so terrifyingly refreshing.
