When Jennifer Kent was first developing a horror film centered on grief, she kept coming up against folks who didn’t see a future in it. Many objected to her project’s proposed title, which doubled as the name for the ominous monster she’d created as a metaphor for unresolved trauma. “You can’t call a film ‘The Babadook,’ ” she remembers being told.
“That’s crazy. No one will ever remember it.” Speaking to The Times over Zoom from her native Australia, Kent, 55, is no longer rattled by those early naysayers.
They’ve been proven wrong. Her finished 2014 movie, which features a ferocious central turn by Essie Davis as a single mother struggling to stay tethered to her life in the years following the tragic loss of her husband, is returning for a limited theatrical run beginning Thursday. The rerelease will mark a decade since Kent’s mother-son horror classic first terrified Sundance, earned rave reviews (from the likes of Stephen King and William Friedkin ), won a coveted prize from the New York Film Critics Circle and netted more than $10 million in global box office on a $2 million budget.
Esteem for “The Babadook” has only grown — not in spite of its “crazy” name but perhaps because of it. “I mean, people did say, ‘What a stupid name,’ ” Kent clarifies. “And it is.
Like, it’s a nonsense name. But there’s something about him that people remember.” Kent immediately lights up, as if she were talking about an old friend.
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