MovieChat Forums > The Babadook (2014) Discussion > Theory about the movie

Theory about the movie

posted 8 years ago by Will1988
8 replies | jump to latest

I just watched this movie last night, and I have a theory about the Babadook. This is my theory, and I am sure a few of you have similar theories. I just want to suss this out a little bit. Please feel free to comment / question etc...

The Babadook was actually the mother. There was no demonic entity living in the house and closet, but instead the mom would lose her temper and let her inner demon (the Babadook) take hold, especially when the child was being out of control. However, this would further scare the child, and caused an even further breakdown of the mother. By the end of the movie the mother has a blown mental breakdown, lets the inner demon take control, and fully embraces the Babadook. However, once she goes too far (after killing the dog and almost killing her son) she is brought back to reality, confronts her fears, and manages to control the inner demon.

Examples:

1. This whole incident starts a week or two before her son's birthday / husband's death anniversary. The mother chooses to celebrate her son's birthday in tandem with his cousin's birthday (a week earlier). This way the mother can celebrate her son's birthday, but not on the actual day that she cannot bare to celebrate because of her husband's death. The mother hates that time of year because it reminds her of the pain and loss she suffered. This is when her inner demons start taking over.

2. The mother works a job she seems to hate, surrounded by people who have lived long lives and are now elderly and just sitting their doing nothing. The mother probably subconsciously resents being around people who have grown old, because her husband was young and lived his life to the fullest (the movie alludes to him being a musician), but was cut short.

3. Whenever Sam has a breakdown around his mom she seems to get distracted, and her tooth starts to hurt and she gets a migraine. Now while a kid's screaming and throwing temper tantrums would cause most parents some grief, the kid is always screaming for his 'Mom' and at the same time saying the 'Babadook is with them. The mom probably lets her inner demon take control for a short period of time. Case and point, while driving the kid keeps screaming for his mom, and then starts writhing in pain when his mom tries to ignore him. Clearly the kid is troubled, and clearly the mom can't handle it.

4. The whole movie seems to reenact the The Mister Babadook book. The mother is shown frequently going into a dream like state, and by the end it is as though she is living out the book - especially after she ripped it up and new pages were added showing what she would do to her dog, kid and herself.

5. Through out the film the kid tells the mom don't let it in. The babadook wants to be let in. This is a metaphor for letting the demon take control. By embracing the past and her misery she lets it in.

6. The ending. The mom has a full blown breakdown, starts trying to enact the book. This seems to have all started when Sam goes into the basement and starts unearthing his father's belongings. The mom is forced to confront her late husband's items, and brings up the painful memories. That is when the Babadook really takes hold. Towards the end the Babadook comes in the form of her late husband. She reaches out and embraces it and then is 100% taken over. After trying to kill her kid she realizes she has gone too far, and has come back to reality. The Babadook takes it true demonic form, but she shouts it down, and it dies and retreats. What is left is clothing on the ground. The mom decides to overcome her demons. She throws a birthday party for her son on his actual birthday. She brings a plate of worms down to the basement, where the Babadook screams at her. However she does not let it take control. She feeds it a little, but then goes back to enjoy her day. The worms could symbolize the fact that she has come to terms with her husband's death, and that that is all that physically remains of him... worm food? The husband's belongings remain in the basement as just memories to the mom - for now. But whenever she goes down there the memories come back and might try to release her inner demon, but she is in control now.

Anyway that was my take.

What do you all think?

[–] Whatlarks 8 years ago

Yes, the filmmaker made that perspective pretty clear, but she made another one available too. I think the film's depth only becomes accessible when the two perspectives are combined.

It's not necessarily true that "There was no demonic entity living in the house." Arguing for the one perspective exclusively misses the fact that the Babadook's effects are ALSO seen through an objective POV. Take, for example, Sam being dragged up the stairs. That's not from Amelia's POV.

The best psych-horror stories, like this one, trade on the insight that the psyche always wants to project itself onto the world. If your mind is sick, like a sick God you will make the world in that image. Psych-horror exploits the truth that reality is not fixed but takes the form one gives it.

The movie speaks to the primal sense that feelings within us can be so powerful they can develop into an independent entity, an emotional spirit so overwhelming it can burst its psychic bounds and become concrete in the external world, an autonomous force, out of one's control. That can be the flowering of something made of love, or it can be the extrusion of something corrupt and malevolent.

During a terrible fight with your lover, you lose control and "bite his head off." It falls to the floor and rolls to your feet. In that moment you were consumed with hate. Horrified, you come back to your senses, and in the ensuing silence the room vibrates with the violence. As if there is another being present. Not you. In fact, you actually say, "That wasn't me. I didn't mean it."

Who hasn't been "overcome" by a repressed emotion, and after "venting," said "That wasn't me"? Who hasn't needed to leave a room after someone has "lost control" because the emotional violence lingers, a vibrating, real thing?

So to see the Babadook as "only the mother," and "There was no demonic entity" external to her excludes half the story's potential meaning and pleasure.

Some stories, like the best psych-horror, ask that we let go of the rules governing and restricting ordinary perception, and open ourselves to potentially broaden our way of experiencing the world. We are asked to set aside our usual way of comprehending everyday reality. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

It's a porous border between the world of the psyche and the external world. We re-create reality moment-by-moment. The inner monster exerts a very real influence on the external world. In Jennifer Kent's own words:

"She has made a career out of suppressing the darkness and difficulties and stressing them so much that they were gaining so much energy that it was starting to control her. You can consider it the shadow side or a supernatural force, or however you want to read it. It can work both ways... What would happen if you pushed down on some grief or difficult feeling for so long and with so much strength that it developed an energy and split off from you?"

A rational analysis would blow apart such ideas. But rationality and literalism aren't the only or necessarily the best ways of knowing the world. Psych-horror celebrates that fact, and tries to open us it, to experience its truths.

"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson

[–] Will1988 8 years ago

Thank you for the very thought out / thoughtful response! Interesting read! Makes sense.

[–] Whatlarks 8 years ago

Most welcome, Will1988. I enjoyed your intelligent reflections as well.

"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson

[–] nocturnelle1 8 years ago

Yes, I believe it was definitely the mother! There is even a part in the beginning of the film, where she's at the birthday party for her niece and tells the other mothers that she used to be a children's book author. It was said in passing and the dialogue quickly digressed to something else. There was no need for the filmmaker to throw in that fact, except to connect her with the child's book that mysteriously appeared in her house, in her child's room on his bookshelf. She's the only one who had access to the house. Psychologically, there was so much going on with her; she was depressed, overwhelmed, overworked, suffering insomnia, post traumatic stress, grief, and lingering resentment towards her son over the death of her husband. She was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and she was completely isolated from her sister, she had no support system. Even if the Babadook was an actual monster, an entity completely separate from the mother, it doesn't negate all of the aforementioned problems she was struggling to cope with. It makes more sense, in a logical, realistic sense, that she went off the deep end. She was unraveling immediately on screen and continued a descent into madness throughout the duration of the film.

To me, that's also much scarier than a monster or a demon. Things that are plausible, horrors that can truly happen to people, to you, are far more frightening. We all know that the boogeyman isn't real. But people losing it and going crazy... well that is real. If you're a child, is anything scarier than having a mom who you you can longer trust to keep you safe and alive?

[–] Cscui (14) 4 years ago

Yes, I think the mother wrote the book, gave more confirmation once she says she was a writer and worked with some children stuff.
When she wakes up, looks like she didn’t rest at all and then the book is in the entrance, glued and added pages. I had thought that her hands were dirty from the ink but because I had not payed attention until she burned the book.

I also have the same theory, the grief, the insomnia, the fear coming back every year before the anniversary, like reliving the same, that mental state that you bottle up, it really F everything up until you can just accept it, confront it and learn to control it, it will never go away but it can get weaker and tamed in that “basement” as you live with it. I know it.

I simply loved the movie. If I was a writer I would have wrote it myself.

[–] Mm_Blaahh 8 years ago

What invisible force pulled the boy upstairs and repeatedly into the wall? What could he see in the car before convulsing? Im sorry but this wasnt solely the mother, your theory would make too many scene's unexplainable. It attacked her and her son because she was vulnerable. It didnt expect her to fight back the way she eventually did and accept her tragic reality and realise how much she truly loved her son, when she did it submitted to the basement, waiting.

[–] smidget65 8 years ago

yes.

[–] fer_sm90 7 years ago

I like your theory,

Anyhow,my theory is that "The Babadook" is mental illness, i personally think it would be either bipolar disorder or phsycotic breaks.

1.The Mom is obviusly clinically depressed, her husband died while she was giving birth to their son. The child is also depressed, but i think he haves other issues besides that one, i think he haves AD/HD.

2. At first we get to see that mom tries to treat her son like every other child, she thinks he is just "weird", she tries her best to tolerate and love him, but her mental state just won't allow it. As the movie progresses we see that Mom finally accepts that her son is different (The scene with the doctor) and this acknowledgment takes her on another pitch of stress since how is she goin to be able to treat her child, she just can't hold everything herself.

3. The fact that her sister just won't stand her anymore, plus the insomniac is the last stroke, after that she HERSELF begins to see and hear the babadook.

it starts quietly but the babadook begins to take hold, and then it is just impossible to ignore.

4.Through the film we get to see:
a) Denial of the existence of the babadook
b)acknowledgment of it.
c)confronting the babadook
d)Learning to live with the Babadook

and then at the end, where it is not gone but "controlled", i think that particular scene represents how mental instability or mental illness is never gone, it's something you have to learn how to live with.

Plus, extra props for one of the best written kids in modern cinema. i found that kids are often in movies as mere accesories or justifications, but this kind is an actual character with motivations and personal growth. Not many modern films have been able to pull that off (only "Room" comes to mind).