Fairy tales are much darker than we care to admit. From Hansel and Gretel, to Snow White, to Little Red Riding Hood, fairy tales are filled with children confronting parents who want to abandon them, kill them — or maybe aren’t their parents at all but monsters in disguise.
Jennifer Kent’s beautifully original, deeply unsettling horror The Babadook plays with the deep Freudian horrors of such tales, using the motif of a children’s story to examine an unraveling familial relationship. Essie Davis (superb) plays Amelia, an isolated widow struggling to cope with depression and the increasingly troubled behaviour of her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman, brilliantly emotional and freakish). A clawing, hyper-active and attention-seeking child, his obsessive love for his mother causes his role to cross the line between son and surrogate partner. A scene in which Samuel misinterprets Amelia’s masturbatory moans as pain, and rushes to her bed to protect her, is a deeply uncomfortable indicator of their dysfunctional bond.
When a mysterious and creepy children’s book comes into their lives, The Babadook’s terror becomes clear. Mother and child both become haunted by the image of the titular black and lurking creature, which becomes symbolic for Amelia’s depression. A monster that grows stronger with denial and infects the mind with paranoid, fractured and violent thoughts, Amelia’s Babadook causes her to unravel. In response, Samuel becomes more needy, more helpless, more shrill — and Kent masterfully shows us how a desperate mother might just snap.
The Babadook’s design is pallid and clammy; its suffocating bleakness and grey palette perfectly emulating Amelia’s mindset. Meanwhile, the late-night television’s endless loop of early surrealist films reveals Kent’s respect for cinematic masters and their fantastical horrors.
In cinemas now.