If horror is about saying the unsayable, it is no wonder that Australian writer-director Jennifer Kent’s 2014 debut, , is held in such high regard by those in the know. Legendary author Stephen King called it “deeply disturbing”, and director William Friedkin said, “I’ve never seen a more terrifying film.” “It’s the great unspoken thing,” Kent told The Guardian newspaper of her masterpiece, which turned 10 in May 2024.
“We’re all, as women, educated and conditioned to think that motherhood is an easy thing that just happens. “But it’s not always the case. I wanted to show a real woman who was drowning in that environment.
” Amelia Vanek (Essie Davis) is a widow and single mother to six-year-old Samuel (Noah Wiseman). They live in a gloomy house in suburban Adelaide, in Australia. Her husband, Oskar (Ben Winspear), was killed in a car accident while driving Amelia to the hospital to have Samuel, and his absence looms large in their lives.
One night, he finds a pop-up book called on the shelf, and they read it as his bedtime story. It tells of an evil creature with long talons, a cape and a top hat, who creeps into people’s houses to menace them. “If it’s in a word or it’s in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook,” warns the text.
Soon they start seeing the Babadook everywhere – on television, in the next-door neighbour’s house, even scuttling across the bedroom ceiling – and the horror really begins. Make no mistake, the Babadoo.
