You can’t get rid of the Babadook.
My first encounter with The Babadook took place in a barn in Vermont during my first summer at graduate school on Bread Loaf Mountain. Surrounded by newly made friends and in a setting that felt pretty magical by day, I was surprised at the terror the film incited in me when I’d sat down feeling so safe and secure. I was too ashamed to flee my front row seat and appear cowardly in front of these new friends, so I sat through an experience unlike any other I’d had with horror movies before this one. This was before I converted to a horror movie enthusiast, and I think my deep unsettlement stemmed from my feeling that the fiction being played out before me was terribly real in my own life.
Scary movies were always scary for me in the way that a monster under the bed is scary. It feels all too real in the time allotted to the film, but when the lights come on and the credits roll, you know they’re just movies and what’s real and safe is back to being real again. The Babadook forced me to acknowledge that the suspense and slowly building terror of this story was a reflection of something very real in myself. It has its share of jump scares, shadows and a creepy child, but the film has more depth to it than surface level scares and reminds you that the real horror is sitting right alongside you, even within you.
Australian director Jennifer Kent’s debut film explores the grief and trauma experienced by a young mother and her son in the wake of tragic loss that has left their family without a husband-father figure. Kent invented the name Babadook for her film, basing it on the Serbian name for the boogeyman: babaroga. In Hebrew, babadook translates as “he is coming, for sure” - an apt title for the monster, though there is no evidence that Kent had this translation in mind when directing. Her film is a larger development of the short film she created in 2005 called “Monster”. The Babadook gives a name and story to the horror created in the short film. How do you keep your child safe and yourself safe from a monster if you insist it’s just a doll? How do you heal from trauma, from loss, from addiction if you just use the word with no meaning attached? That’s what the short film briefly captures and what The Babadook tackles in greater depth.
"The Monster" - Jennifer Kent (2005)
The film opens with a close up of Amelia, the mother played by Essie Davis, living through the car accident that took her husband and falling into her bed, awakened from her nightmare by the calls of her son, Samuel, played by Noah Wiseman, who has experienced his own nightmare. The opening establishes the weighty presence of grief in Amelia’s life and the distance it causes between her and her son, which the scene accomplishes by closing on a two-shot of them sleeping together in her bed with as much distance as she can manage between them on the mattress. It is not the sweet mother-son slumber scene we’d expect from a mother comforting her son, because she can’t comfort him.
Though she goes through the motions of the dutiful mother, Amelia’s looming depression keeps her from being fully present to her son, whom we learn is just as old as her loss. Samuel is a precocious little blonde kid with a healthy fixation on magic and a concerning obsession with protecting himself and his mother from the monster of his dreams. His mantra seems to be “I’ll smash its head!” He’s a bit of a nightmare for a single mum, even with his cute Australian accent, and the sinister connection between him and the yet unseen titular monster arrives before we are a full five minutes into the movie. The shabby black dress hat Samuel wears as part of his magician costume mimics the hat that has become a defining characteristic of the Babadook. This connection is significant, though Amelia doesn’t realize it until late in the film. In a seeming sweet close up of his smiling face over the shoulder of his mother, Samuel embraces her, but the tightness of his hold causes her to snap at him. This shot of his smile, framed by the black hat, mirrors the hold that this monster has on her and her unconscious perception of Samuel as linked to her monster.
The resentments we harbor against the people, places and institutions in our lives function similarly. In working the Twelve Step Program, we’re guided to look at these resentments and analyze our place in each of them. Our lists include anyone or anything we feel has harmed us in some way, and our analyses reveal how our self-focused responses to these wrongs have created harmful feelings of anger, bitterness, grief and misunderstanding. Resentment means to feel again, and whether we’re aware of it or not, we feel these past harms again and again in our minds when we fail to acknowledge, understand and forgive them. Amelia’s son is the human embodiment of the deep resentment she feels at the injustice of her husband’s death that left her alone to raise their son. She tries to be a mother to Samuel, but because she cannot articulate the complexity of why he makes her feel this pain again and again, she cannot move forward and remains stuck in the clutches of his embrace. Through no fault of his own, Samuel’s continued existence and growth become not only irksome and trying, but torturous to his mother. She doesn’t want to explore these feelings that are so foreign to what she knows a mother should feel, so she throws herself into the tasks she knows are expected of a good mother.
In her job and in her home life, Amelia takes care of everyone but herself. We see her going out of her way to ensure a patient receives her tea the way she likes it, listening to the work woes of her sister, Claire, handling Samuel’s behavioral issues at school and taking out the trash for her elderly neighbor, Mrs. Roach, all done with a sweet smile and that “everything’s fine” look on her exhausted face. Amelia holds her grief and depression deep inside, and we only receive hints of its magnitude from her conversations with a woman in the grocery store and with her sister at the park. At one point she confides a small bit of her struggle to Robbie, the kind coworker who clearly has a little crush on her. She gives him the top of her iceberg of chaos, telling him she’s stressed and Samuel’s sick, but leaving out the massive reality beneath these facts. He tells her, “You don’t have to be fine, you know.” Like Amelia, we somehow have learned that we have to be fine all the time. No matter how bad things get, in addiction and even sometimes in recovery, we struggle to admit weakness and struggle. I personally put that pressure on myself now the same way I did when I was drinking to deal with everything. In active addiction, my “I’m fine” stemmed from a survival instinct. I have to be fine so they won’t see how bad it’s gotten. I have to be fine so they don’t worry or tell me I need to stop drinking. I have to be fine because then everyone will know I’m a monster if I’m not. These days, I find that the need to be fine stems from this pressure to prove that my recovery is solid. I feel like I owe it to people to say I’m fine, because it scares me to think that even with all this progress I’m still subject to the feelings and inadequacy I tried to escape for so long. Like Amelia, I sometimes forget that this isn’t the solution and try to hide that part of me.
Our negative thoughts are not welcome in our lives and make us feel distant, isolated and incapable of moving forward, but they are there because of something in us - some deep longing to acknowledge and reconcile with the feeling they stem from and to let it be OK. We are afraid of those thoughts because we are afraid of how unhuman they are, because we fear that they make us the other in a world where everyone else belongs. But the truth is that the people around us may also have thoughts that are like these; they may have their own monsters that they don’t know how to handle.
Amelia sees no solution other than throwing herself into the expectations of being a good mother and caregiver. She cannot bear to slow down and care for herself, because that entails processing the loss of her husband and everything that means for her as a single mother to the child she gave birth to on the same day her nightmare began. This is her monster, and it finally materializes as if to force her to face it after years of avoiding it and letting it build up to the point that there is no choice but for it to burst into the open.
Addiction can be like this, slowly building from its inception as a seemingly foolproof means of coping until we just can’t go on anymore. It reaches a point when our lives are no longer manageable, as if the addiction suddenly takes on a life of its own and becomes the self-born chaos we hadn’t realized was growing inside us. That’s when our addiction - whatever it is - crosses the line from habit to monster. It becomes a word with which we may be familiar but not as a reality that holds meaning in our lives. Fittingly, Amelia’s monster arrives as a children’s book, a carefully crafted storyline that tells her in plain, albeit disturbing, language the nature of this strange thing that she “can’t get rid of.” The book accomplishes a few things in the way it introduces the Babadook into the plot. As a children’s book, it makes the subject matter seem like something that doesn’t have a legitimate place in the adult world. It is there, but it does not merit an epic poem or novel. We can breeze through it in about five minutes and call it a night. We want to treat issues like depression and alcoholism like this when they are present in our lives but haven’t yet reached the point of demanding action. We try to brush them off if we even acknowledge them as a reality, and we try to make them seem small to others and to ourselves because then we can believe we’re in control of the situation. It’s not that bad, just a scary bedtime story. We can even convince ourselves it’s not real if we want to. The book, Mister Babadook, is particularly disturbing with the black pop-up images and its insistence that you can’t get rid of the creature; for Samuel, it quickly becomes the vague monster that he has already imagined lives in his home at night. His initial interest turns into hysterical fear-induced sobbing within pages, and Amelia decides to do exactly what the book says she cannot. She tries to get rid of it. Hiding it away somewhere out of Samuel’s reach, she considers the situation taken care of. Rather than addressing the horror or even letting him finish the book (she reads the rest on her own and finds the final pages all blank), Amelia decides hiding the thing is the best course of action. Out of sight, out of mind.
She of course continues to suffer the consequences of her monster despite having stashed the book. Similarly, when our own choices are perceived as ill-received by those we love, we may choose the option of hiding it. I know my people saw behavior that hurt them and caused concern long before any of us vocalized the reality of my addiction, but I chose to hide as much as I could because deep down I knew what kind of monster was taking form in the pages of my own book. I think that’s a common practice for people suffering from addiction. We hide what we can as a sort of survival tactic, believing that full disclosure of our monster would not only catalyze a path of no return but would also frighten away anyone who found out the full truth. This is how Amelia tries to deal with the Babadook; she tells Samuel it isn’t real and hides it. We deny our problem while trying to hide the full extent of the ugliness of it all.
Amelia progresses into hiding herself the more this secret weighs on her. Her work suffers; she cannot be present and empathetic to the patients in her care. She struggles to be present in the same way with her son. Samuel’s behavior (bringing weaponry to school in order to defend against monsters) has led to Amelia pulling him from the school; and since he has also seriously disturbed his aunt and cousin, Amelia’s only choice seems to be staying home with him under the pretense that he is sick. When Robbie shows up at their door with flowers and a gift for Samuel, the disconnect between what he expects and the reality he walks into is heartbreaking for both him and Amelia. Robbie realizes the disarray and seriousness of something much more complicated than he’s been told by his friend, and Amelia loses the pretense of normalcy that has allowed her to cling to the belief that things aren’t that bad. Robbie has seen the undeniable chaos of her life, but he only sees the vestibule of it. Amelia does not invite him further - into her house or into her reality. She lets him leave with the feeling that he’s been lied to and that she doesn’t want him to know the full truth. She doesn’t ask for help even though this man who so clearly likes her and would do anything to help her is standing right in her doorway. The situation progresses quickly, and even Samuel senses that Amelia is no longer his mother. He reaches out to Mrs. Roach for help, but Amelia denies that anything is wrong and even lies to the old woman when she comes over to check on Amelia in the middle of the night. People try to help Amelia in their ways, certain ones more than others, but Amelia doesn’t know how to ask for help for the thing that she really needs to take care of. She can’t let any of them in, but she lets the Babadook in without consciously choosing to in her failure to admit anyone else to her true horror.
Why? It’s simple.
Take your problem, whatever it is that was born from trauma and lives in the shadows of your hidden spaces. This might look like alcohol abuse, a shopping addiction, an eating disorder, codependency issues, a gambling problem, perfectionism, crippling depression or a social media addiction born from the terrible, insatiable desire for connection, validation or love. Of course, this handful of letters is only a phrase titling your undefinable monster. This is your Babadook. It lives in your house, and though you’ve read about it in the clean, tame way your child self may have read about a very hungry caterpillar, you know that these words on pages are nothing compared to the monster you know they’re describing.
Addiction is a nine-letter noun with a whole tree of connotations and understandings, but none of the words we use to define it can encapsulate the storm of meaning we feel when it arrives in our lives. So you have your Babadook, your undefinable, unfathomable problem that’s really only visible to you, because you wear this mask that you’ve finely tuned and perfected over the years for others to know you by. This mask isn’t a lie; it’s what you’ve chosen to present of yourself via appearance. It is what makes you look human and alive. It is what makes you look like others because we all wear them. Wearing this mask, you might be able to confide in a friend that you have a problem and show them the book that describes said problem. But anyone who has not entered your house and lived with your Babadook can only know it by the words on the page and the unsettling pop-up images that complement the story. How can you invite someone who knows you by the mask you wear into a space filled with as much horror as the one in which the Babadook rampages, skulks and creeps up in its predatory way in places you ought to feel safe and whole? You live here, so this is your reality, but anyone else who opens the front door and sees behind that mask would leave. Your Babadook is the monster you can’t bear to face but have to because you live with it, and you don’t want to share that monster with another living soul because your suffering self already knows that everyone will leave when they see what the book is really about.
There is nothing harder than letting that mask fall down and standing there as we are to ask for help. Amelia does try to seek help from her sister and later from the police, whom she seeks out with her concern that she has a stalker, but they can’t give her what she needs. Everyone who could be a source of help to her is presented as other, almost enemy-like, in the film. Claire, the police, social services, the school faculty, her work staff, etc. I think they’re presented this way to highlight the fear she has of receiving real help. Accepting help means accepting that she cannot control her own life, and she desperately needs to be able to believe she can still do that. Surrendering on that level is a necessity for recovery, but it is the scariest thing many of us have to do.
Amelia tries to retain her control over her story by destroying evidence of the book that holds it. When it comes out of hiding with new pages detailing a woman killing both her dog and son, Amelia tears it up and later burns it, only to find it returned intact, albeit damaged, both times. One of the new lines in the book reads “the more you deny, the stronger I get,” and we see this growing strength of the monster in Amelia’s quickly crumbling resolve to maintain a hold on her life. Though the monster has lived as her shadow all this time, it soon possesses her in a terrifying scene in her room when it overpowers her and seems to enter her through her screaming mouth. This usurpation of her soul fulfills the lines in the book: “You start to change when I get in, the Babadook growing right under your skin.” Amelia’s voice and mannerisms change drastically from this point: she twitches strangely; her eyes dilate; she yells with a voice not her own; and she goes after both Bugsy, her little dog, and her son.
Spoiler alert, she kills Bugsy. It’s horrible to watch, and it’s more gruesome than the stock dog death scenes in a lot of movies. I learned from a professor that many directors insert a dog death in their movies as a cheap means of building emotional connection with their audiences. The dog dies; you feel sad. You’re slightly more invested in whatever else is happening in the movie. Bugsy’s death accomplishes a bit more. The dog has seemed to sense something off for most of the film, and he’s easily the most innocent character in the case. In a brilliant performance by Hachi, whose role in The Babadook remains his only claim to big screen fame, Bugsy has been the one character who knows the truth the whole time, and he calls Amelia out on it in a fit of barking when she’s really lost it. She can’t stand to have him see her as she is, and she goes after him. His little legs are no match for her. In killing Bugsy, Amelia eliminates one of the few characters who has confronted her or challenged her choice to progress into monster mode in isolation. His death reflects the reality that we really do harm those who love us when we refuse help. Amelia becomes the story she tried to destroy, because she didn’t try to change the real story. She didn’t know how to change the real story because she can’t face the fact that all this horror is rooted in her inability to properly grieve the loss of her husband.
Her husband appears in the shadows of the basement where she has stored all his things, and she embraces him as if he were still alive, despite what she knows. She cannot move on from the loss, because she is unable to say goodbye to him and to her place as his wife. This is why she keeps his things, continues to wear her wedding ring and refuses to celebrate Samuel’s birthday on the day that also marks her husband’s death. Instead she chooses to hide this grief in the basement of her mind, letting herself crumble under the weight of loss and resentment. This habit makes her susceptible to the monster when it arrives in full force in her home. Similarly, our past experiences, when unresolved, can imprison us and lead us to choosing paths of more harm than good. We hide it all: our past traumas, our inability to cope, our temporary solutions to the problems that only escalate as we continue in the cycle. We become so overpowered by the current we’ve waded into that we struggle to see any way out other than to keep swimming in the whirlpool we’ve chosen. Sometimes we can’t get out on our own.
Amelia doesn’t do it on her own. Samuel helps her find the strength to do that. He recognizes that she is now completely overtaken by the monster and launches a full scale attack on her with the weapons and traps he’s prepared for the Babadook. In one of the final scenes, he has her tied down in the basement before she breaks free and seems about to strangle him in the same way she did Bugsy. Even caught in the horror of being strangled by his own mother, Samuel reaches out and strokes her cheek with his hand. This small gesture of love sparks something in her - in the true self Amelia has given up to the Babadook - and gives her enough strength to break her hold on him, a choice that leads to her bloody discharge of the monster from her system. Sometimes that’s what it takes: a real, brave gesture of love and experience of connection to break the trance we’re living in while in addiction.
The horror doesn’t end there, and it finally takes Amelia standing up to the monster in defense of her son to reduce it to a basement-bound creature in her home, still present but no longer dictating her mind and body or threatening her livelihood. She and Samuel gather worms together in their garden, and Amelia prepares to bring them down to the monster in the final scene. She tells Samuel that he can see it when he’s older, but this is a task for her alone in the time being. When Amelia brings this food down to the Babadook, she sways back with fear at his terrible presence, but she soothes it, repeating that it’s alright. She leaves the bowl of worms for it to consume, and she returns to her son.
This ending is so creepy, but brilliant. Amelia keeping the Babadook in the basement and visiting to feed it worms represents the truth of how we have to live with the terrible parts of our past and present selves. We can’t erase trauma or eliminate past wrongs; we have to live with them. And once we’ve entered that cycle of addiction, we can’t ever truly forget its place in our lives. Samuel hauntingly reminds us of this after Amelia has emptied herself of the monster when he says, “you can’t get rid of the Babadook” before the creature snatches him before her eyes. He’s right. Once he’s in, you really can’t get rid of him. So you learn to live with him. You stand up to him and reclaim the home and self that are rightfully yours, and you put him in his place. For Amelia, it’s the basement. Worms carry the symbolism of miraculous regeneration and healing, and this choice of meal for Amelia’s monster represents how the practice is a crucial part of her recovery. By feeding him, she practices acknowledging the reality of her traumatic experience and being present to its ever-looming threat in her life. Even in the basement, it’s scary and real. Just as addiction of any kind remains a very real threat even when we’ve moved forward in recovery. At any moment, the monster may emerge from where he waits, but we have the choice to let him back in.
Amelia knows that she has to nurture the monster, because she has realized that he is a vital part of her. She cannot deny his existence, but she can choose how to cope with him in her life. She accepts this part of her life in the same way we accept we are powerless over alcohol or whatever other monster rules our lives. By accepting this truth, she is able to begin the healing process of her mind, body and spirit. And she does so with a community she has let in to help her. She realizes that she can’t keep her Babadook in the basement and keep it a secret from those she loves.
We need to practice similar openness in our ongoing struggles in recovery. Trying to do it alone is what really makes us monstrous, because humans were never meant to live without connection and communion with each other, with our true selves, and with our higher power. If you or a loved one needs help and doesn’t know how to ask, please try and keep trying. Someone will understand the language you’re speaking in, but you have to let them in.
