The Babadook rewrites the book on indie horror

With a debut feature that was little seen in her native Australia, writer-director Jennifer Kent became a Sundance Film Festival darling, and she has begun racking up serious year-end critical kudos. Can a movie in which a mysterious figure hides in a children’s pop-up book rejuvenate the horror genre? The Babadook seems poised to do just that.

Kent’s film centers on how a widow named Amelia (Essie Davis, of The Matrix Reloaded) comes to regret reading a creepy story called “Mister Babadook” to her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Frightened by the tale, Samuel starts building weapons and acting violently to protect his mother. The boy could be losing his mind. Or maybe Amelia is the one whose sanity is in doubt.

The Pitch reached Kent in Sydney, and in a phone conversation, she explained why monsters that stay out of the light are scarier than what Hollywood CGI sends flying at your face in 3-D.

The Pitch: Not unlike a Grimm tale, your story starts out kind of cute and quickly becomes horrific.

Kent: I remember hearing Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth, Pacific Rim) say fairy tales are the birth of horror. I think that’s pretty spot-on, actually. The old fairy tales — and I’m not talking about the Disney versions — the real ones were brutal. They tell us a lot about human nature, and they prime us for life in a way that can be very useful. I think that’s the purpose of myth, actually, to delve deeply into the human psyche and throw interesting things up about it.

The resolution for The Babadook is fascinating because it’s neither pat nor an opening for The Babadook 2.

Some people don’t like that. At the risk of sounding arrogant, it says something about themselves. For me, without seeing the film — I don’t want to create spoilers — for me, I didn’t want to create a story where supposedly normal people have something weird happen to them, and then everything goes back to normal. I wanted it to be like my experience of life, which is that something happens and it becomes a part of you. You have to negotiate with it from that point on.

We [Australians] aren’t comfortable with our feelings. I think it’s an Anglo-Saxon thing. I know that Americans and Australians are made up of all different cultures, but the predominant one for Australia, anyway, is to push down, say you’re fine. The most common response to a greeting in Australia is, when someone says, “How are you,” you say, “Not bad.” It’s the most noncommittal thing ever. I’m fascinated by people who push down on stuff like that. I think Amelia is a prime example of that.

In your 2005 short, Monster, a creepy doll is the source of trouble. Why do you think the doll isn’t quite as scary as a fairy-tale character come to life?

I can only speak from my perspective, but the book becomes a premonition of sorts. It speaks to her, and it’s actually communicating with her. I think the fact that it grows and changes and develops and adopts an attitude, a particularly aggressive attitude — these are things that make it frightening to people. When you read a story to kids, the stories make such a huge impression on them. It’s like our first experiences in the world. So on some primal level, I think it gets to people.

We actually see less of the Babadook in the longer, more expensive film.

I wanted to hide it as much as possible because I think people’s imagination can do the work far more accurately and cleverly than I can because their imaginations can run wild the more you withhold. It’s very hard to show nothing, to show something in the shadows. It took a lot of work to show just the right amount and still keep it hidden.

It’s also interesting to see a horror movie where characters change like Samuel and Amelia do.

In a lot of horror movies, you don’t have characters at all. The best ones that have endured all have strong characters. Like in John Carpenter’s The Thing, for example — it’s a simple film. And by that, I mean it’s simply shot. There’s something cold and brutal in its simplicity, but the characters are really clear and interesting. That’s why that film that wasn’t a hit at the time, it’s grown a huge audience, and it’s a classic for that reason. With The Exorcist, for example, it’s about that mother and the horror and the hell of what is happening to her child. That’s an incredible film.

Both Stephen King and Exorcist director William Friedkin have publicly endorsed your film. What’s it like to get a blessing from them?

It’s like it’s blown the top off my head. I can’t believe the response from these people. They have devoted their lives to telling these stories, and they respect the realm of horror. They understand its power and its worth. For me, there’s no better compliment than that.

How has the reaction to The Babadook differed in Australia from here in the States? You’ve said local films are a tough sale there.

Yeah. It was a bit disappointing initially. We played to packed houses, but we were only on 13 screens. That was heartbreaking for me at the time. But having said that, I never thought this film would do well in Australia. We don’t tend to value our own product. We don’t take pride in our own cultural heritage, unfortunately.

But the good news is that people are now realizing that because of the success in Europe and America and in the U.K., at least Australians are starting to hear about the film. And we’ve just been nominated for six AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts) awards, which is like our Academy Awards over here. This is a huge thing for a horror film. We’re really proud. I don’t want to be down on Australians because I do think that a lot of them want to see the film, and now they’re really making the effort, now that they know about it.