"If it's in a word, or it's in a look, you can't get rid of the Babadook," goes the famous line in Jennifer Kent's 2014 horror classic of that name. Ten years after its original release, though, The Babadook's storybook rhyme needs updating: Today, it's in sitcoms, reality TV competitions, and stop-motion sketch comedy shows, too. Like Amelia (Essie Davis) and her son, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), popular culture can't get rid of the nattily-attired boogeyman; unlike mother and son, pop culture apparently likes keeping him around, if we go by the number of times he's surfaced in unexpected places over the last decade.
IFCFilms and ICONIC Events are re-releasing The Babadook to commemorate its 10th anniversary, two months ahead of its premiere in U.S. theaters; the movie debuted worldwide at the Sundance Film Festival's 2014 edition, and did the rounds at other fests until its November opening.
This is great news for the folks who missed the film at the time, comprising "most" on account of the scant number of screens it played on—a sign of the times, predating the horror new wave that crested later in the decade and continues to roll over the industry in 2024. To watch The Babadook now is to witness the seismic event that stirred the wave. Some viewers didn't have the luxury of choice to see The Babadook in theaters in 2014; others did, but missed out either for lack of awareness or contemporaneous interest.
Now, those viewers, whether longtime horror aficionados or recent converts, can count themselves among the film's audience anew. That this recursive cycle is in keeping with the nature of the monster itself is a coincidental (but not unwelcome) bit of dovetailing detail. In the movie, Amelia and Sam find themselves plagued by the Babadook after a pop-up book enumerating its pattern of predation appears on the boy's bookshelf out of the blue; the creature slithers into its victims' psyches and drives them mad, as Amelia discovers after reading the book to Sam.
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Andrew Crump.
