Spooped: The Babadook (part 1)

Not sure why they're in a mirror,
but I dig the aesthetic

N

This is the first post in a new “series” I’m planning to start in which I reanalyze movies to look for juicy, spoopy nuggets of wisdom. As you have probably guessed from the title, this post is about the movie “The Babadook,” directed by Jennifer Kent (yay! A female horror movie director!), which is one of my favorite horror movies. I like it so much that I’ve watched it 3 times even though it gives me a panic attack to watch, which speaks both to its merits as a horror movie and to how horrorble (sorry, couldn’t resist) I am at watching scary things.

If you haven’t seen the movie, this blog will spoil it for you, so probably don’t read if you have even the slightest interest in ever seeing it. It’s on Netflix, so go watch it. I’ll wait. I’m literally just ASCII characters in a computer; I won’t be insulted (actually I will- ASCII characters have feelings too- but I’ve got good coping mechanisms like deciding to appear as an integer instead of an ASCII character. Bram, please stop making the computer jokes- people don’t get them).

(pause for people who haven’t seen to go see and for people who don’t like computer jokes to groan fully and for those fair few who fall into neither category to pat themselves on the back)

Essie Davis not in the Babadook

Essie Davis in the Babadook

So, what is the Babadook? Good question, rhetorical Bram! Here’s a(n admittedly not so) short plot synopsis: Essie Davis plays Amelia Vanek, a Mom whose husband is dead and who raises a fugging deranged little boy named Samuel (Noah Wiseman) on her own. She hates her son but refuses to admit it. All she wants is to be left alone and to not think about her dead husband who died driving her to the hospital to give birth to Samuel (starts to make sense why she hates the little sqib). Sounds reasonable, right? It’s only been like 10 years.

After the exposition of revealing generic support characters like Aunt who hates the little boy, niece who hates the little boy, and sweet old lady next door who is the only one who doesn’t hate the little boy (what more could you ask for?), we finally start to get some plot!

One night Samuel finds a strange book called “Mr. Babadook” (Oh sqib! That’s the name of the movie! This has got to be important!) and asks Amelia to read it to him. She’s too busy being tired and hating Samuel to think that it might be a good idea to pre-screen a mysterious creepy-looking childrens book, so she agrees.

It started off so sweet. Mr. Babadook
is the OG sour patch boi

At first it seems sweet. Mr. Babadook is just some shadow monster with a tophat- he looks pretty silly, so what could be the harm? But as the book continues we start to see that maybe this movie wasn’t mislabeled horror: with each page the pop-ups become more distrurbing as the babadook promises that no matter how hard you try, he will find a way to get into your home and he will murder your cute little dog wearing your skin like a glove and then he’ll murder your sqib of a child (but don’t worry- you’ve still got free will to choose when he does it, so at least there’s that). Sounds like an easy answer for Amelia, just let the boi on in and then you can finally get some gawrshdag peace of mind finally. She hates the sqib anyway, so it’s a bit of a two-birds-with-one-babadook scenario if she’s thinking rationally. Kidding! She actually loves Samuel (and the dog to a lesser extent), so this is where her identity as a mother creates an internal conflict with her desire to cling to the past. Plot ensues.

She tries to get rid of the book, but it keeps coming back and Samuel keeps finding it and beccause he’s a little sqib he won’t shut up about it (he also really likes magic, so you know he’s dum). Creepiness ensues. Shards of glass appear in food. Bugs come out of the wall. You know, light-hearted spooks. Samuel starts thinking that the babadook is there with him. At one point he says it is strangling him and causes Amelia to crash her car. The phone rings and Amelia hears the babadook through it (this is a scene that chills my bones every time I watch it). She tries to go to the police, but unfortunately the police make fun of her (gotta love portrayals of the police- it’s almost like police aren’t perfect and need to be mocked in every artistic portrayal of them; sarcasm or not? You decide). While there, she sees a coat and gloves that look like the babadook and gets even more paranoid.

Amelia’s one source of comfort is the old lady next door, who she often watches through her window (both Amelia’s and the old lady’s window). But one night she looks through and sees the old lady, but in the doorway behind her (the old lady) she sees the Babadook. Now that nothing is safe we’re ready for the action. She decides that she is just tired and delusional and that Samuel is just tired and delusional (because that’s how we’ve chosen to deal with uncomfortable perceptions as a society: we just label them delusions and eat over-priced pills to make them go away. I may be slightly biased). So she gets some sleeping pills from the doctor and forces Samuel to take them despite his insistance that they have to be ready for the Babadook.

Luckily, Samuel knows that delusions aren’t delusions because he’s a kid and hasn’t yet gone through the “learning” (*cough**cough*indoctrination*cough*) to “help” him see the difference between what is in his head and what’s in the “real” world (I’m not biased, clearly). He hides the pills under his tongue and prepares himself for what he knows is coming.

Amelia tries to sleep but is awoken by the Baba-dook-dook-dook sound that the book promises will signify the coming of Mr. Babadook. She goes downstairs and sees her dead husband, who says they can be together if she just gives him the boy (that’s a good deal, if you ask me). But she realizes this is just the Babadook, and so the real boy himself comes out to play. The camera angles help a lot here. There’s a beautifully-terrifying shot of the Babadook gliding down the hall that you’d have to be a Navy-colored seal not to poo yourself looking at.

She runs to her room and watches as the door slides open behind her and the Babadook slides along the wall like a shadow slug. She hides under her covers like a little child, because unlike Samuel she still thinks blankets can repel a disturbing monster. She peaks out and that’s when the Babadook gets her. The end. The moral of the story is don’t ever sleep.

Artistic depiction of poor Bugsy (yes,
the dog has a name) being murdered

Just kidding! Under the influence of the Babadook (wearing her skin like a glove, as promised), she murders the poor dog (as promised) and then turns her sights to Samuel (as promised). Luckily, Samuel has read him some Sartre and he believes in a little thing called RADICAL FREEDOM, so he’s not about to believe the ending of some stupid children’s book. He’s booby-trapped the house to protect himself.

He manages to lead his mom into the basement, which had been off limits since it reminded Amelia of her husband. Samuel manages to tie up Amelia and together they force the Babadook out of her, look under its top-hat at the horror hidden there, and then they’re okay.

Babadooks don't like people food. They
just like eating worms and dirt.

The last scene is what makes this movie so amazing. Amelia is sitting out with Samuel in the garden, when she grabs some worms and puts them on a plate. She takes it down to the basement and leaves it there for the babadook to consume with his magical powers.

So that’s the Babadook in a nutshell. I’ve already gone on for a while, so if you want to see me butcher this beautiful movie with analysis, click on to the next blog (https://bramsfunblog.blogspot.com/2018/07/spooped-babadook-part-2.html) Or you can go do something better. I don’t care; I’m just bits of information in a computer :)

Good talk