Jennifer Kent’s ‘The Babadook’

And thus a Down Under mother stretched to the breaking point by her husband’s violent death, and her six-year-old son’s penchant for battling monsters no one else can see, proves that if we really want to stamp out horror in this world, books are the worst culprits of all.

A handmade pop-up book creepier than any prop has any right to be has become a real-world sensation after its starring role in Australian writer/director Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, released in selected theaters on November 28. Amelia (Essie Davis) is plagued by everything from loneliness, poisonous friends, and a wearisome job to sexual frustration and one very high-maintenance, high-pitched kid. She’s fragile, depressed, and at the very least, has a serious toothache. One night, her son Samuel (an Omen-channeling Noah Wiseman) pulls an extremely ominous black-and-red book off the shelf (where did that come from? Better not to ask.) called Mr. Babadook.

That’s because Kent, the author of my new favorite horror movie, knows that nothing is more terrifying than the stuff that’s already under our own skins, and nothing stokes that midnight worm of imagination as a book can, unfolding, unique and indelible, in your own mind as soon as you read the words.

My advice

Here are a few tips for watching The Babadook:

1. Bring a friend. No, not one of those macho, can’t-scare-me friends. A friend who is clutching you as fast as you both can reach across the armrest when that bedroom hinge creaks.
2. Plot the shortest distance to a restorative hot chocolate before you leave the theater.
3. After the movie, remove all coatracks, clothing on hangers, or outfits draped on chairs from your line of sight once you lie down in bed. Basically, anything that could have a vaguely human shape in the dark has got to go. (Just trust me on this.)

Horror afficionados will recognize imagery from almost all of the genre’s classics in The Babadook: the basement, that dread dark universe under every bed, the claws of Freddy Krueger, the ominous wardrobe, the distorted child in the dark, the murderous parent, hallucinatory bugs, black bile, and spine-tingling levitations of possession.

Echoes of Stephen King

But in Kent’s hands, these tried-and-true pieces of terror are more homage than pastiche, and not just homage to the horror genre, but to the things that truly frighten us, and therefore make us human.

Because Kent, like American horror master Stephen King, understands that the most deep-seated, resonant scares aren’t demonic dolls or exorcisms or serial killers, restless graves or haunted houses. They’re rooted in realities like grief and loss, addiction, depression, and mental illness, and the sneaking suspicion that, like the vampires of legend, your tormentor isn’t there because it chose you, but because you invited it in. Horror is a place where real-life vulnerabilities blur your perception of what’s real and what’s not.

As the movie progresses, it becomes clear that Amelia and Samuel are battling a sinister, incorporeal yet powerful presence with strange taste in clothes, but that doesn’t mean the movie’s monster isn’t also a potent metaphor for the way grief and other kinds of trauma can take over our lives if we don’t let others in to help and take our own steps to cope.

Not your average scare

Many horror films follow a predictable arc in which a family discovers and acknowledges a supernatural nuisance; enlists some psychics, paranormal investigators, or priests (à la Poltergeist or 2013’s excellent The Conjuring); and banishes the malevolent presence in a noisy climax as demons screech and bodies fly. But The Babadook, particularly in its unsettling yet strangely satisfying denouement, breaks this mold.

For one thing, Amelia may be frazzled, but she knows the right thing to do when you hear a menacing, mysterious scratching at the door. No, you don’t get up and traipse through the house investigating it, like every other nightgowned waif in a haunted house movie. You pull the covers over your head and, whatever happens (and no, it’s not pretty, folks), wait for morning.

Yes, there is a twist in store for Mister Babadook and his victims, and it points to a truth that can be as painful as it is restorative. Just as the book warns us, you can’t get rid of the Babadook, and you can’t banish the darkest moments of your own life, either — to move forward, you have to find a way to coexist and maybe even empathize with the shadows.

For Paula Berman’s take on horror film tropes, click here.