The Babadook

“If it’s in a word. Or it’s in a look. You can’t get rid of … The Babadook.”

Pleasantly surprised by the scare this contemporary Drama/Horror/Thriller gave me! I found myself at moments looking from the corner of my eye because I couldn’t take what would happen next. Written and directed by Australian Jennifer Kent (her first feature film); this film had elements from the classics but was fresh and new in ideas and story. Essie Davis (who went to school with Kent) plays ‘Amelia’ our lead and she absolutely shone portraying a wide range of emotions, all believable throughout the course of this film. 

Although this 2014 film with a 93 minute run-time didn’t triple at the box office, it is one of the most innovative, phenomenal and thought-provoking thrillers which since it’s release has won 36 awards and 45 other award nominations. ‘The Babadook’ was excellently shot and was rich in performance, that the atmosphere created made viewers heart’s skip a beat at all the right moments. I found the soundtrack as equally unnerving and it brought great depth and complexity to this eerie tale. 

Babadook is an anagram of “A bad book” and coincidently if spelt “Baba-Dookh” in Hindi means “Father Grief”. The name of this film was inspired by the Serbian word for boogeyman or babaroga. With all that aside William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist 1973) said he’s never seen a more terrifying film than ‘The Babadook’. The difference between the way the both filmed their stories is that Kent made sure child-actor Noah Wiseman only delivered lines to an adult actor who stood on his knees because she didn’t want to destroy a childhood to make her film. The story is based on a short film she made in 2005 named ‘Monster’, and I must say she did a hair-raisingly good job! It is a masterpiece that will be remembered for years to come.