The Babadook returns after a decade to re-traumatize us. And we mean that with all the love in the world.

Essie Davis’ turn as Amelia Vanek held a mirror up to a lot of us, and even more of us upon re-watch as we all stumbled through grievous loss during the pandemic.

A film that gave us permission to more easily air out our grief, reflect on it’s non-lineation and take stock of it’s unbearable heaviness. Director Jennifer Kent knows how to pull the heartstrings and the emotional damage to it’s highest peak (most recently in, The Murmuring of Guillermo Del Toro’s Cabinet of Curiosities, also starring Essie Davis) and The Babadook is a film that stays on everyone’s lips when asked to speak about our favorite films in the grief horror genre.

The film focuses on Amelia (Davis), still burdened five years after the sudden death of her husband Oskar (Ben Winspear) who was killed on the way to driving Amelia to give birth to their son, Sam (Noah Wiseman). Amelia and Sam are disconnected by grief, tension, depression and anger but tied forever by the brief era they spend with The Babadook, a monster from a magically appearing children’s book that has invaded their home.

Sam’s emotional fluctuations tire an already grief-laden Amelia and in the depths of The Babadook’s permeation, all her rage and intolerance bubble to the surface. In a climax of let go or be dragged, Amelia must face the monster her unprocessed grief has become and learn to live without her dependence on it – finally moving through it and building a life with Sam.

Kent is quoted in a Guardian interview in 2014 upon the film’s release, “… where horror excels is when it becomes emotional and visceral. It was never about, ‘Oh I wanna scare people.’ Not at all. I wanted to talk about the need to face the darkness in ourselves and in our lives. That was the core idea for me, to take a woman who’d really run away from a terrible situation for many years and have to face it. The horror is really just a byproduct.”

 The Babadook will screen nationwide starting September 19th in honor of the film’s 10th anniversary.
Follow this link for updates and ticket purchases.

In the spring of 2024, The Future of Film is Female celebrated “Shadows of Change: Women & Horror in 2014”, taking a look at six essential independent horror movies directed by women from 2014 – with two films starring contemporary horror heroine Maika Monroe – that were emblematic of a shift in independent horror and a starting point for the next generation of genre moviemaking.

“Ten years ago two landmark horror films, Jennifer Kent’s THE BABADOOK and Ana Lily Anapour’s A GIRL WALKS HOME ALONE AT NIGHT, were released and the genre was never quite the same. Not only are they a part of a group that ushered in experimental explorations of genre filmmaking but, importantly, they distinctly mark a moment when women begin to finally be the ones in control of telling their own narratives. These films explode the notion of the “Final Girl” (women in horror told from the male POV) and reclaim stories about motherhood, identity, sexuality, trauma, and the ever-present danger of being a woman in the world.”

— Caryn Coleman, The Future of Film is Female

**Please check out their accompanying journal that includes essays on the films here.