Jennifer Kent
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Several horror movies play on the concept of motherly love as a pure love and a strong enough to vanquish evil like in Mama , but rarely outside of drama do we see the kind of imperfect motherhood shown in The Babadook, which is what makes this Repulsion-like household of horrors so frightening.
As in Roman Polanski’s Repulsion, ordinary household objects gain malignity as the isolation and claustrophobia sets to work on mother and son.
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
She also pays special attention to setting: as the monster gains power over Amelia, the house grows increasingly grotesque, like something out of The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (though there are even more architectural references, to The Shining , Repulsion , and The Omen ).
It may remind you of Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) or Polanski’s horrors like Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1969) and The Tenant (1976).
The movie’s long final chapter takes place inside the grim house, where the depiction of Amelia’s claustrophobic crack-up — exacerbated by Sam’s fear and the possible infestation of the Babadook — splits the difference between the insanity-caused terror of Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion” and the demon-borne horror of “The Evil Dead.”
Its influences can be felt throughout — “The Shining” and “The Exorcist” in particular — but Kent demonstrates a clear understanding of how to get the sort of gnawing terror those films manage.
Like “Pan’s Labyrinth” and “The Shining,” this is also about a child who sees more clearly than the adults.
As is all of "The Babadook," a haunting masterpiece of psychological horror, claustrophobia and paranoia in the vein of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant," Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Combining fright and psychological analysis, Kent delivers a metaphor of horror and parenthood as powerful as “The Shining,” “The Exorcist” or “Rosemary’s Baby,” where moms and dads learned they were no match for demons.
“Psycho,” “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” “Rosemary’s Baby”?
But instead of Wan's in-your-face jump scares and fakeouts, The Babadook has more in common with The Shining, mainly because it's a deliberately plotted horror tale about the specter of mental illness.
Author Stephen King (The Shining) and director William Friedkin (“The Exorcist”) have been vocal early adopters of “The Babadook” and it’s no wonder – the film hangs on their work like a coat on a coat hook.
William Friedkin, who directed the movie that tops poll after poll as being the scariest ever made — 1973's The Exorcist, natch — is quoted as stating that "I've never seen a more terrifying film than The Babadook.
The last section of The Babadook is an exorcism movie, but different in thrust from The Exorcist, The Conjuring, and other “religious” films in which a male authority (often from the Church) arrives to expel the demon that has descended on a weak family.
No less an expert than William Friedkin, the director of “The Exorcist,” has declared he’s never seen a more terrifying film.
As is all of "The Babadook," a haunting masterpiece of psychological horror, claustrophobia and paranoia in the vein of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant," Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Such is the case with Aussie writer-director Jennifer Kent and her mesmerizing, disquieting, unexpected debut feature, "The Babadook," a film that, like 1973's "The Exorcist," seems to have arrived fully formed as an instant classic.
In the movie’s opening phone call, one that mirrors the call Drew Barrymore received in the original, Tara (Jenna Ortega) — after initially ignoring a strange call on “the landline” — tells the strange voice on the other end (again Roger Jackson, franchise MVP) that she prefers “elevated horror” like “The Babadook,” “Hereditary” and “It Follows.”
A voice on the phone strikes up a conversation about scary movies, but the reference goes over Tara’s head because she’s into “elevated horror,” like 2014’s The Babadook or 2017’s Get Out .
While there are plenty of meta jokes and cool, hip references to The Babadook and It Follows, the film still feels dated.
“I’m more into elevated horror,” she bites back, citing A24 fodder like The Babadook that’s more focused on theme than grisly jump-scares.
So you get the scene where someone explains the rules of being in a horror movie (this time done by the returning David Arquette), along with scenes referencing recent developments in the genre, including “elevated” options like The Babadook and It Follows .
But this movie also understands and references "high-minded" horrors like The Babadook and Hereditary .
The idea of a children's picture book as a demonic incubator recalls The Babadook ; both the creature design and the strategic use of a motion detector summon the Alien franchise; and even the shark-tooth trim on the young protagonist's hoodie seems a playful nod to Jaws , while his mop-top is pure Danny Torrance in The Shining .
I can see where people would want to make parallels to The Babadook (2014), Jennifer Kent’s horror story about a boy and a book, and the creature that lives inside, but that’s where the similarities end.
It's quite obvious from the set up of the story and its narrative beats that it was inspired by Jennifer Kent's 2014 film The Babadook , as the film plays out almost exactly the same as that movie throughout.
Based on his popular 2017 short film “Larry,” I imagine some viewers are going to compare writer/director Jacob Chase’s feature-length debut Come Play to Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook .
Conspicuously echoing Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Mike Flanagan’s Before I Wake , the film tells the story of a child haunted by a monster that only he can see—one awakened by a seemingly indestructible children’s storybook, and who serves as an allegorical embodiment of childhood trauma.
A kind of late-stage Amblin knockoff, Come Play’s combination of childlike wonder and storybook horror gives the impression of E.T. crossed with The Babadook and features solid creature design that gives Chase’s kind-of-ridiculous creation enough of a threatening bite to unsettle younger audiences.
In the subgenre of mother horror, The Babadook deserves mention among the likes of Rosemary’s Baby, Dark Water and The Conjuring .
As is all of "The Babadook," a haunting masterpiece of psychological horror, claustrophobia and paranoia in the vein of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant," Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Combining fright and psychological analysis, Kent delivers a metaphor of horror and parenthood as powerful as “The Shining,” “The Exorcist” or “Rosemary’s Baby,” where moms and dads learned they were no match for demons.
Kent has given us a grown-up horror tale in the tradition of "Rosemary's Baby, "Psycho" and "The Exorcist."
“Psycho,” “The Exorcist,” “The Shining,” “Rosemary’s Baby”?
In Roman Polanski’s sinister Rosemary’s Baby (1968) Mia Farrow plays an expectant mother who has just moved into a new apartment block.
But The Nightingale, whose arguably feminist reinvention of the genre culminates with an image lifted straight from The Searchers, is doing something maybe even more philosophically sophisticated: It acknowledges that killing will haunt you, maybe ruin you even, while also wondering aloud if there’s some evil so deep and oppressive and destructive it must be met with violence.
“The Nightingale” bears echoes of other films of struggle in untamed lands: the fervent anti-Australian colonialism of “The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith,” in which a young 19th-century Aboriginal man goes on a revenge-fueled killing spree; the tracking narrative of “The Searchers,” the stormy male-female bonding of “True Grit,” and the rage-filled survivor’s story of “The Revenant” (though we can be thankful there are no bears in Tasmania).
Despite the best efforts from ace cinematographer Radek Ladczuk, who makes this a visually stunning film, especially influenced by American Westerns, especially John Ford’s “The Searchers,” the showy naturalism and dreamy sequences ring false.
People are going to argue up and down about whether the extremes Kent goes to were really needed, but her film is evocative of other, similarly themed movies like The Searchers or Come and See in its depiction of vengeance's depressingly widening gyre.
The Night House (2021)
Directed by David Bruckner
influenced by The Babadook (2014)
Themes Characters
Much in the same way The Babadook invoked themes of anxiety, or It Follows used the terror of pending adulthood to fuel its frights, The Night House successfully builds a complicated, complex, and scary fable of grief.
With a bit of It Follows, a dash of The Babadook, and a hint of The Entity, herein lies a thriller that dares to personify depression itself, giving form to concept that isn’t just a metaphor.
Beth is such a fascinating character to follow through her grieving process, and reminded me favorably to the lead character in The Babadook.
In being a female-led horror film-slash-haunted house pic that’s really (slight sigh) about grief, “The Night House” follows in the mysterious disembodied footsteps of Jennifer Kent’s “The Babadook” and Ari Aster’s “Hereditary.“
There’s space for it on the same shelf as Ari Aster’s Hereditary and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook, even if Bruckner plays to the gallery a little more than those filmmakers.
Literalizing this particular concept is always tricky; one of the reasons The Babadook gets away with it is because the real-life consequences of the depression-monster in the film are minimal.
From 2014's The Babadook to 2o18's Hereditary to The Lodge earlier this year, this sub-genre is here to stay, and Natalie Erika James' Relic deserves a spot among the best of them.
Some fit squarely in the horror genre, like Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook or Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night.
It’s a sophisticated and confident debut feature by filmmaker Natalie Erika James whose distinctive voice ensures that Relic holds its own against films that employ a similar approach to horror and personal trauma such The Babadook (Jennifer Kent, 2014), The Orphanage (JA Bayona, 2007) or even older classics such as Don’t Look Now (Nicolas Roeg, 1973).
With fantastic effects work and dark lighting that never caused your eyes to strain, Relic is superb and earns its spot next to Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook when it comes to processing human emotion and fear through horror.
(It especially echoes works like Hereditary and The Babadook.)
Between The Babadook, Hereditary and Us, the premise has evolved from a log line – mom must protect her kids from a demon – into its own sub-genre.
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
A key influence is the terrifying “The Drop of Water” segment of Mario Bava’s 1963 masterpiece “Black Sabbath,” a movie seen on Amelia’s television.
David F Sandberg’s feature debut is not in the same class as recent hits such as It Follows or The Babadook (a film Lights Out superficially resembles), but this is a very economic piece of work that gets just enough mileage out of its key high concept.
The mother-son set-up might recall “The Babadook,” a recent exercise in horror.
It’s a concept that has been brought to the screen before - in films that range from Forbidden Planet to The Babadook - and it’s going to remain a potent one for many years to come.
Much like The Babadook or It Folllows, Diana represents a lot more than what is on screen, but those films established those themes more gracefully.
“Lights Out” reminds me of two other even better horror movies from the last year or so: “The Babadook” and “It Follows.”
In a similar style to Jennifer Kent's The Babadook , Heisserer turns the monster into a metaphor for mental health issues.
In the grand tradition of Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and Robert Eggers’ The Witch , writer/director Ari Aster’s debut (in theaters June 8) is a work of malevolent formal precision and mounting-hysterics performances, all of which combine to create an expert atmosphere of dawning dread and, later, supernatural madness.
As with so much inspired horror, from Rosemary's Baby to 2014's psychologically acute The Babadook, the movie gets its breath and a palpable sense of unraveling identity from a fearless female performance, this time by Toni Collette, the revered Australian actor capable of sustained fits of mania.
Hereditary does offer less of the clean-cut metaphoric flair that a film like The Babadook chases after, since its ghosts don’t exactly function as walking metaphors for depression, grief, or alienation - or a combination of all three.
The best female lead performance in a horror film since The Babadook–which, while having more of a funhouse creature vibe, shares a similar sense of intensifying dread–the actress brings a relatable throughline of familial frustrations and maternal regrets.
Annie Graham (Toni Collette, in an intense, phenomenally complex performance to rival the one Essie Davis gave in The Babadook ) is a work-from-home artist who specializes in dioramas of her spaces, emotional and physical.
Ari Aster’s debut feature feels, in many ways, like a culmination of the art-horror renaissance ignited by the likes of Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook and elaborated upon by Nicolas Pesce’s The Eyes of My Mother and Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala’s Goodnight Mommy .
The film is reminiscent of the 30-minute short film The Grandmother by David Lynch, whom Kent has cited as an influence (the auteur's has a singular approach to horror ).
"The Babadook" borrows heavily from early David Lynch, not just his award-winning short "The Grandmother" but his classic "Eraserhead," an extended nightmare that often plays out on a literal stage (the same happens more than once in "The Babadook").
Movies like Dark Water , The Conjuring , and The Babadook have similarly sought to explore the psychology of motherhood in horror terms, and Under the Shadow is a strong addition to the mix.
Babak Anvari’s debut has been compared to Jennifer Kent’s phenomenal The Babadook, and genre fans should be excited to hear it’s not just because both films feature a difficult relationship between a mother and her child and a metaphor-laden supernatural foe.
Instead, "Under the Shadow" bears a closer similarity to "The Babadook," released the same year, which also focused on a mother protecting her kid from an an eerie, largely unseen figure who may or may not be a metaphor for psychological duress.
Under the Shadow is this year’s The Babadook.
But Anvari is merely controlling our expectations as he prepares his fright assault, putting a mother and child in the kind of psycho-supernatural peril that recalls any number of genre standouts, from Poltergeist to The Babadook.
To make a recent comparison (and to a film that also played at Sundance), Under the Shadow is similar to the The Babadook in that it’s not really about the monster; it’s about what the monster represents in the relationship between a mother and child.
The Sixth Sense (1999)
Directed by M. Night Shyamalan
influenced The Babadook (2014)
Visuals Themes Characters
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
Look past the horror trope of the Satanic or disturbed little boy seen in The Omen, The Ring, and The Sixth Sense, and you'll find a child struggling to deal with the loss of a father he never knew, and Amelia's subsequent, deeply buried resentment toward him—in a completely normal way .
Wiseman didn't get the memo because he is Davis' equal in every scene here and is living the part rather than saying his lines - Harvey Stephens in The Omen and Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense have some serious competition.
With his cowled eyes and pallid skin, young Noah Wiseman combines the plucky spark of Phantasm ’s Michael Baldwin with the haunted gaze of The Hills Have Eyes ’ Michael Berryman – a figure of both pity and fear who inspires wildly contradictory impulses in his tormented mother.
With his cowled eyes and pallid skin, young Noah Wiseman combines the plucky spark of Phantasm ’s Michael Baldwin with the haunted gaze of The Hills Have Eyes ’ Michael Berryman – a figure of both pity and fear who inspires wildly contradictory impulses in his tormented mother.
There are many other echoes of screen horror here: clips of Maria Bava’s Black Sabbath; portents of domestic madness in the mode of Polanski’s Repulsion; a general sense of claustrophobia that’s more than a little reminiscent of The Exorcist; a use of grey paint and an overall color-leeched palette to rival The Sixth Sense; and as female-centric psychological horror, it also recalls the evocation of shadow-steeped nocturnal anxiety so chillingly staged in Robert Wise’s The Haunting (63).
The film’s own publicity gleefully invokes Roman Polanski’s “Rosemary’s Baby” and “The Tenant,” as well as William Friedkin’s “The Exorcist” (Friedkin is a loud fan of “The Babadook”), “The Omen” and “Let the Right One In.”
It may remind you of Kubrick’s The Shining (1980) or Polanski’s horrors like Repulsion (1965), Rosemary’s Baby (1969) and The Tenant (1976).
Saturated with dread and genuinely unsettling, Australian director Jennifer Kent's first feature The Babadook is an elegant little horror film reminiscent of Roman Polanski's "apartment trilogy" -- Repulsion (1965), Rosemary's Baby (1968) and The Tenant (1976) -- albeit minus Polanski's kinky male gaze.
As is all of "The Babadook," a haunting masterpiece of psychological horror, claustrophobia and paranoia in the vein of Roman Polanski's "Rosemary's Baby" and "The Tenant," Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" and William Friedkin's "The Exorcist."
Traditional horror fans who may be looking for some scares may need to think twice when encountering Koko-di Koko-da as it could be considered more of a psychological horror in the same vein as The Babadook .
Assembled together from the jagged pieces of Happy Death Day, Last House on the Left and the Babadook , Koko-di Koko-da is as visually and tonally messy as that recipe sounds – sporadically engrossing, but largely infuriating, dispensing the same sharp stick to the ribs that Lars Von Trier likes to smuggle into his best projects.
That about sums up the experience of watching a movie that plays like the bastard offspring of Groundhog Day and The Babadook.
It manages to be a strange blend of films such as The Babadook and A Clockwork Orange , but fails to find a good middle ground for the story of grief to meet the comedy.
Like in Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook , grief makes Jason Voorhees and Michael Myers look like pikers.