The Babadook is an Australian horror film released in 2014. This film is characterized by a strong psychological impact, showing the real suffering of modern life. The film mainly focuses on the revealed problems of paranoia and constant anxiety regarding personal life. It can be understood that in this way, the concept of human fear is shown and how one can sometimes become a hostage of one’s unwillingness to fight such obstacles. The Babadook is an allegory of the loss of someone close and the depression that results from it; the monster of the Babadook represents the struggle with depression, and Emilia’s overall deterioration represents what people feel.
The Babadook is a monster that comes and scares people at night. The film reveals the idea of fear and how to counter it. In the center of the plot is a single mother who tries to counteract her son’s fear of a monster. As the son begins to frighten the mother with his behavior, she tries to calm the child and give him some peace, but it does not work. The child continually talks about some monster and even makes his weapon to fight it (“The Babadook“). The beast itself appears after a mother reads a collection of stories to her son, after which strange things begin to happen in the house. Along with this, the child constantly begins to see the Babadook and do illogical things. Importantly, Emilia’s mother loses herself through constant paranoia and fear, and her body becomes the monster’s.
The main problem, because of which this monster begins to visit the family, is when the mother’s constant worries start, and the son’s apparent instability is manifested. Because Emilia is constantly stressed and trying to calm her son, she loses her sense of self and continually experiences grief. In particular, constant exhaustion negatively affects a woman, and she constantly begins to feel not very well. In this way, the monster thinks there are problems in this family, and constant fear begins to appear to them (Izaakson, 2017). Because the mother continued to live with her grief, namely the loss of her husband, her emotional and mental state negatively affected her son and was very suitable for the Babadook.
Due to the experience of grief, Emilia begins to be constantly in a gloomy solid state, which, accordingly, is very positive for the monster since it can then easily penetrate a person. After such an episode, it is worth saying that, after all, the beast is depicted in the fact that a person can quickly lose himself if he does not receive decent help in case of the loss of a loved one (Izaakson). According to this, if a human completely surrenders to his negative emotions, his whole life becomes constant fear and anxiety. All these negative emotions and experiences of depression are embodied in the characters of Emilia before and after the monster takes over her body.
The allegory of depression and the Babadook is straightforward; after the monster enters Emilia’s body, you can watch it destroy her from the inside out. Here you can trace how a person changes when negative emotions take over and begin to rule life (Izaakson). Emilia stops taking proper care of her son and makes fun of him “You little pig. Six years old and you’re still wetting yourself. You don’t know how many times I wished it was you, not him, that died“ (“The Babadook“). At the same time, constant fear prevents you from receiving positive emotions or changing your life. The only thing that begins to dominate a woman’s life is continuous paranoia and fear that take over a person’s life. Here one can attribute such states of a woman to how often a person struggling with depression can feel.
The film demonstrates the problem of suppressing one’s emotions regarding losing a loved one. The fact that Emilia did not seek help from specialists from the very beginning shows how all this grows and becomes a large-scale problem that affects a specific person and the environment, which can sometimes suffer even more. The issue of depression is revealed in the film very clearly in how the mother could not cope with the loss of her husband on her own for so many years (Izaakson). Neglect of one’s emotional state directly demonstrated all possible psychological disorders, which later grew into a monster whose emotions and state are easily perceived as a depressive disorder in a person (Izaakson). In particular, there must be a partial development of Emilia’s character and how she makes the right decision and tries to let go of her fear and grief “I’m sick, Sam. I need help. I just spoke with Mrs. Roach. We’re gonna stay there tonight“ (“The Babadook“). On the positive side, it is a good demonstration of understanding one’s problem and trying to get rid of what prevents one from living.
In conclusion, that should say that the film tries to explain how important it is to take care of your health. Human emotional instability and ignoring obvious problems demonstrate what can happen and what the consequences can be for a person. The Babadook monster must be the personification of everything terrible and depression, which usually sits in the middle of a person and spoils life by taking away all the positivity and turning everything into fear and anxiety.
Works Cited
Izaakson, Jen. “The Babadook – a Film about Life’s Real Horrors.” Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century, 2017.
“The Babadook.” IMDb, IMDb.com, 2014.