600word flim review
qwerty12345
TheBabadookFilmNotes-1.docx
Spoiler Warning
The Babadook isn’t a Hollywood monster or spirit that pulls you across the ceiling or sucks you into a strange underworld. He’s a Jungian-type shadow of the darkness inside our own hearts. “If it’s in a word, or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” warns the beautiful, simple handmade book Amelia reads to her son Sam in the first few scenes of this much buzzed-about film. The book is familiar, children’s books are often unsettling, introducing to the child, and the parents, a way to talk about the darker parts of life. Of course, it is often the case that children’s nightmares can be inspired by creepy books, but that doesn’t mean that monsters aren’t important. We need fictional monsters because we have monsters living inside of us.
Sam was born into the world with a grief-stricken and unhinged mother who had no time to take care of herself and find a way to deal with her loss. As a single mom, she has to work long-hours as a caretaker for the elderly, and then come home and dig up love for her difficult son from her scant emotional resources.
They barely have any support system, and Sam’s violence and odd behavior drives away the only family they have. The film oozes with the complicated feelings of a mother and son who both desperately love each other, but are terrified of themselves. Each one is flailing, and cannot hold onto one another without sinking further down. When the Babadook is introduced to them, he’s a place to hang all these repressed feelings and nightmares, all the nauseous terror of love and need.
When it turns out that The Babadook is really Amelia, or that Amelia has become possessed by him, it also seems plausible that Amelia is his creator as well as his puppet. Amelia used to write children’s books, so makes sense that she used her book-making skills to create the mysterious, haunted object that infiltrates their life. If that’s the case, the second book depicting herself as the monster was also made by her, possibly in an insomniac trance.
Seven-year-old Sam is a difficult child, but his situation is horrific, and has been long before The Babadook manifested itself. He’s just beginning to comprehend his mother’s resentment towards him, and the horrible fact that his father died on the same day of his birth. His obsessions with magic and weapons seem to stem from his intense need to protect himself, and his mother, from the constant threat of their very existence. As the monster grows, Sam himself transforms from a bit of a monster into a helpless child. As the danger increases for him, both the audience and Amelia start to see him more as a doe-eyed helpless child than a symbol of destruction, burden, and loss.
When they are saved from the Babadook’s madness by Sam’s tenderness, a neighbor’s concern and love, and, especially, Amelia’s assertion of power over the malevolent force, the Babadook is still with them. He will never leave, because he is still a part of Amelia. Feeding this creature worms is an acknowledgement for both Amelia and Sam of the terrible things they’ve been through, and the realness of the monster, while symbolically maintaining their control over its presence. Why it has to be worms isn’t clear, but maybe that’s not altogether important.
According to Carl Jung, “To confront a person with his own Shadow is to show him his own light.” Everything isn’t fixed for Amelia and Sam now that they’ve confronted The Babadook, but Amelia is no longer a captive to her darker impulses. She isn’t free, because we are never free of the hell we are capable of creating in our own minds, but she is able to functionally live and love her son again because she has acknowledged, and therefore tamed and diminished, the dark terror of her grief and pain.
What Does The Ending Of The Babadook Really Mean?
Posted By: Jesse Gumbarge December 9, 2014
If you’ve just finished watching the psychological horror film The Babadook, then you may find yourself having a few unanswered questions. Was there really a creature at all? What exactly happened? And worst of all, what was up with those worms at the end? Well, let’s try to work through this together shall we? It should go without saying, giving the title of the article, but a SPOILER ALERT is in full effect!
Leading up to the anniversary of her husband’s death, the depressed and emotional Amelia (played by Essie Davis) begins to sense a disturbing presence stalking her and her son Samuel (played by Noah Wiseman) after reading a mysterious pop-up children’s storybook titled “Mister Babadook.”
What’s immediately striking about this film is its persistence on ambiguity. As a horror film it comes across as a very frightening lullaby. On the other hand, the film will most likely not sit well with many fans of the genre because of its departure from traditional dramatic scares and generic imagery. Instead The Babadook treats horror with far more intelligence as it really challenges your emotional output more constructively than films that are similar.
The Babadook “creature” itself takes up less than a few minutes of screen time as director Jennifer Kent focuses on implication rather than the obvious. What’s really effective is how conspicuous the cinematography is; as each shot of the creature is composed with immense subtlety. Its appearance plays on our misinterpretation of darkness. We’ve all been in that situation where we woke up in the middle of the night and thought we saw a strange man lurking in the corner only to discover that it’s only a coat or some random object. Metaphorically, the film is shot with this fact in mind.
As you watch the film you’ll quickly notice that the composition of each character and object is always on the verge of your peripheral vision rather than being directly in your field of view. You’ll think you saw something out of the corner of your eye and before you know it, the film has already cut to the next shot.
Despite there being no loud bangs or jump scares the film still manages to make you tense up simply at the sight of a mere claw in the darkness. Because the film plays on psychology you’re left questioning whether or not the monster is actually a fragment of Amelia’s fears and detachment because of her copious amounts of stress.
Like The Exorcist or The Shining, The Babadook is far more of a human story rather than simply setting up scare after scare. There is an inherent skepticism that needs to be maintained in order to manipulate the audience’s sense of understanding. By giving doubt, you’re also creating a fear of uncertainty; a natural human emotion that makes characters so relatable.
Now, on the face of it, this film may seem like a typical possession movie (even the Kickstarter campaign for the film descried it as such). Though, there is a strong case to be made that the events of the film are simply a representation of Amelia’s sorrow. The film is seemingly about grief and resentment that consumed both her and her son. Sam grew up without a father, he lives with a mother who keeps a locked basement with all his possessions. She clearly has at least some resentment built up towards her son as she finds him partly guilty for causing the father’s death. The kid feels that resentment and sees it constantly from his mother who has visibly gone off the deep end. The metaphoric shit starts hitting the fan when the boy goes into the basement, “releasing the demon” aka bringing stirring up strong memories for his mother.
This happens in cycles every year, hence Sam never having had a real birthday party. The boy feels like he caused everything and his mom reinforces this idea. This causes him to act out at school and also causes him great anxiety. The neighbor next door even says, “I know how hard this time of year can be for you..”
This is a reoccurring theme in both of their lives. They “protect each other” from it. He from her demons and her from his. The boy being tossed around was the mother’s doing. We learn that she sometime’s has out of body experiences (i.e. when she finds herself hovering over Sam with a knife out of nowhere). We as the audience see the boy being thrown around by nothing, but it is indeed the mother. The “possession” was simply the built up of memories/depression/resentment etc.
The Babadook manifesting itself as a top hat-wearing monster? Well, young Sam is obsessed with magic, and magicians tend to dress in that fashion, maybe that has something to do with it. As far as the book? Well, it is stated in the film that Amelia indeed used to write children’s books and when she goes to the police station her hands are black. This isn’t from her burning the book but rather it is most likely from using pastels to create the book herself. Her keeping it in the basement is just her keeping it out of site/out of mind (or perhaps she finally faces her fears and is able to move on). Feeding it worms can mean whatever you want it to mean. Though, the bottom line is that this is not a movie about a demonic possession in the typical sense.
The Babadook isn’t groundbreaking filmmaking but it’s an affirmation in horror that was truly needed. There’s a corky oddity you need to overcome in order to get on the same page as the film. Though, once you do, it’ll keep you thinking and it will certainly keep you scared. There is indeed a persistent chill of how daring The Babadook was to subvert your attention to the unknown rather than the unremarkable.
Vocabulary for The Babadook:
1) Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison.
2) Symbol: something that represents something else by association, resemblance, or convention, especially a material object used to represent something invisible.
3) Subconscious: the part of the mind below the level of conscious perception.
3.1) Unconscious Mind: consists of the processes in the mind that occur automatically and are not available to introspection.
4) Patricide: the act of killing one’s Father.
5) Matricide: the act of killing one’s Mother.
6) Infanticide: the intentional killing of infants.
7) Oedipal Complex: denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious via dynamic repression that concentrates upon a boy's desire to sexually possess the Mother.
8) Castration: is any action by which a biological male loses use of the testes.
9) Castration Anxiety: a boy’s fear of damage being done to their genitalia by the Father as punishment for sexual feelings towards the Mother.
10) Demon: a paranormal often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, and folklore.
11) Possession: psychokinetic control of a person by the Devil or other malevolent spirit
12) Fairy tale: a type of short story that typically features folkloric fantasy characters such as fairies, goblins, elves, trolls, giants, mermaids, or gnomes.
13) Externalize: To project or attribute (inner conflicts or feelings) to external circumstances or causes.
Questions for The Babadook?
1) Why can’t Amelia resolve her grief regarding the death of her husband in the car crash? Might she actually blame Sam for his death? If so, what are the consequences for their relationship?
2) Amelia’s sister is a rotten sibling, why doesn’t she want to help? Why is her daughter such a rotten kid? How come there are so many rotten kids in this picture? Is it because the narrative is written from the perspective of Samuel? After all, he does make the direct statement: “Everybody hates me!” If that’s true, why does everyone hate him?
3) Who puts the broken glass in the soup? Does that have anything to do with pain Amelia experiences in her back molar? Is it real or imaginary pain?
4) Who writes the book The Babadook? What are the consequences to Samuel. In the book, the Babadook appears to want to kill Samuel, is that the unconscious desire of Amelia? How could a Mother ever want to kill a child?
5) How does Freud’s notion of the Oedipal Complex play out in the narrative of the film The Babadook? Would you still be able to understand the film even if you have never read any of Freud’s ideas? How so?
6) Why does Amelia kill the little dog, and then bury it in the back yard? Do the worms come from the decay of the carcass? Has the dog been sacrificed to the Babadook rather than Sam to appease it?
