Jennifer Kent's The Babadook and Trauma as the Monster

Jennifer Kent's The Babadook is a 2014 Horror film about a mother and son fending off attacks from the titular monster. However, in practice, the film is much more about the mother, Amelia, dealing with grief over her dead husband and having to raise a son viewed by other parents as a problem child. The focus is much more on Amelia’s depression, with Mr. Babadook being the physical manifestation of it, and casting depression and trauma as a literal monster with physical repercussions, it shows the difficulty of dealing with them in another unique way.

The film’s scenes are mostly confined to Amelia’s house and framed in shadow, Amelia being the focus of the lighting, as the woman in white. Similar to in Kumiko, white represents kindness and purity - which Amelia wants to be. However, while dealing with a violent child who has her blacklisted from other mother’s events, that purity proves to be holding on to a past she can’t get back, and as the feeling that she hates her child grows, she becomes the film’s real threat. Amelia is frequently stressed and crying throughout the film, and her fear of Mr. Babadook is secondary to her fear of her child, and as her son’s behavior get worse, the audience is mislead into believing that he’s the real monster, Mr. Babadook having been fabricated to explain his behavior. In reality, though, Amelia’s stress has been building up, and with no release and a bad child she’s forced to deal with, her negative emotions take over and she becomes possessed by Mr. Babadook.

The film’s take on Post-Trauma Depression is a complex one. The fact that the depression manifests as an actual monster possessing Amelia and trying to kill her son seems to be a negative view, but Amelia has been through severe trauma and her son’s misbehavior is only making things worse. As the film ends with the two capturing Mr. Babadook and keeping it in their basement, feeding it so it doesn’t do any more damage, as opposed to earlier when Amelia strenuously denied it existed and was terrified by the possibility, however, seems to indicate the film sees her struggles as something that should be acknowledged and accommodated for safely, not just by herself, but by those around her. But the clear part is the danger of the situation to Amelia and her family from her illness. It acknowledges both the Trauma and the Post-Traumatic Depression as difficult and damaging things to deal with, it separates the person from the illness - literally - and understands that it’s impossible to just get over, and that there are no easy solutions. Even at the end, when Mr. Babadook is captured, it’s still a fight to keep him down.