A single mother, plagued by the violent death of her husband, battles with her son's fear of a monster lurking in the house, but soon discovers a sinister presence all around her.
I love horror movies with meanings behind them and artistic value, for example, The Shining. The Babadook didn't need much analysis like The Shining did, but it definitely has an artistic meaning behind it. The film is about a lonely widow named Amelia, whose husband died in a car crash. Her son, Samuel, is very strange, not really fitting in with the other kids, building his own inventions, learning magic, etc. He tends to get violent with other people One day,when Amelia asks Samuel to pick out a book for a bedtime story, he comes back with a suspicious book named MISTER BABADOOK. Personally, I loved the way the book was made. The drawings, the creepily realistic pop-up features, and the progression of fear through the beginning and end of the book. After this is read to Samuel, he starts seeing the babadook and keeps telling Amelia that the babadook is coming to kill her. From here, the suspense builds up to something truly terrifying. I also love how this movie relies on pure psychological horror instead of blatant jump scares to scare people. It gives the movie an ominous feeling because of this. The art in this movie comes from the metaphor that the babadook stands for, grief. The grief is, of course, what Amelia feels towards her deceased husband. Throughout the entire movie, you can see examples of the 5 stages of grief being represented as the babadook. At the beginning, Amelia denies the babadook, but at the end, has accepted it, and controls it so it never gets out of hand. Amelia realizes that just like grief, "you can't get rid of the babadook."
