The Babadook is one of the most original and iconic horror movies in recent years, attracting rave reviews and ending up everywhere from Pride parades to proudly displayed tattoos – and most recently, Netflix. At heart, it's a simple story about a single mom whose kid tells her he can see monsters, but it's about much more than that – and that's why it'll haunt you long after the end credits roll.
Why The Babadook isn't your average horror movie
The story is simple enough. Amelia, who is widowed, is struggling to cope with the demands of being a single mom to her six-year-old son Sam. And then Sam starts having horrific fantasies about a character in a book, Mr Babadook – and Amelia becomes convinced that the Babadook is real, and a real danger to her and her son.
Empire gave it the full five stars, calling it "one of the strongest, most effective horror films of recent years". "It's genuinely scary in its jump moments, but also imparts a lingering sense of dread that will stay with you for days," it wrote. One of the reasons it's so effective is because it's as much a portrait of grief as it is a horror movie. As Empire says, "the backstory... is poignant and the portrait of mother and son locked in a single, escalating fantasy is gripping and horribly credible".
SF Weekly said: "There are legitimate terrors here -- legitimate because, as any bleary-eyed parent will verify, they come from a real and terrible place." And The Mary Sue wrote that "I can't think of a movie since Rosemary's Baby which acknowledges the unspoken fears of motherhood with such humor, horror, and compassion".
And the Pride parades? As The New Yorker explains, The Babadook is "a frightening, fabulous new gay icon" that may have become such because Netflix accidentally listed the film in its LGBTQ+ section. But queer Tumblr rolled with it and had a lot of fun with its new icon. As writer Eren Orbey puts it, "the gay community, witness to so many horrors, is expert at mining spunk and solidarity from what might otherwise seem only tragic."
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