The Babadook (2014) on Netflix
NR20141h 34mDramaHorrorMysteryThriller
Sam, six, has built weapons against a monster he believes lives in their Adelaide home, and his widowed mother Amelia raises him alone. Then a pop-up book called Mister Babadook appears.
- Netflix3.6/5
- IMDb6.8/10272,933 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes98%
Trailer
Plot summary
Amelia Vanek is an exhausted widow in Adelaide raising six-year-old Sam alone; her husband Oskar died in a car crash as he drove her to the hospital where Sam was born. Sam's erratic behavior causes trouble at school and pushes away the people around them, and he is preoccupied with a monster he has built weapons to fight. He brings her a pop-up book, Mister Babadook, and asks her to read it aloud. Its pages describe a figure in a top hat and suit that grows more menacing as the story goes on. The book's unexplained arrival unsettles Amelia, and Sam becomes convinced the Babadook is real. Glass shards turn up in Amelia's food; she blames Sam, and he blames the Babadook. She tears the book apart and throws it away.
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Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Babadook (2014)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- The term babadook is an invention of director Kent's; she improvised it from "babaroga", the Serbo-Croatian word for the boogeyman, rather than taking it from existing folklore.
- Jennifer Kent trained as an actor at NIDA alongside Essie Davis but lost her passion for acting by the end of the 1990s; she wrote to Lars von Trier asking to assist on the set of his 2003 drama Dogville, and considers the experience her "film school".
- In October 2016 a Tumblr user joked that the Babadook is openly gay; in December 2016 another Tumblr user posted a viral screenshot showing the film classified by Netflix as an LGBTQ film.
- During the reverse shots where Amelia was abusing Sam verbally, Essie Davis yelled at an adult stand-in on his knees rather than at the child actor, because the director did not want to destroy a childhood to make the film.
- To attain the funds for the sets, Kent and Causeway Films producer Kristina Ceyton launched a Kickstarter campaign in June 2012 with a target of US$30,000; the goal was reached on 27 September 2012 through pledges from 259 backers raising $30,071.
- Casting director Nikki Barrett viewed around 500 audition tapes of young boys before six-year-old Noah Wiseman was selected; Kent said he had a certain innocence that older boys did not have, possibly because he is the son of a child psychologist.
