Why ‘The Babadook’ Is the Female Version of ‘The Shining’
The Babadook is one of the most acclaimed horror movies of the 21st century. While The Babadook is a great film, it’s not totally original, as it cribs elements from Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. If you analyze the similarities between the two, you’ll see why those movies get under viewers’ skin much more than your average scary movie.
‘The Babadook’ and ‘The Shining’ both take relatable emotions in an extreme direction
The Shining has a lot of unsettling elements, including creepy twins, an elevator full of blood, and an early depiction of a furry. But the real reason why the film is terrifying is very simple. We all want to have loving parents, so the idea of a father trying to kill his own son is deeply upsetting. It goes against our collective desire to protect children.
Of course, The Shining goes out of its way to help us understand why Jack Torrance did what he did. We see early on that he doesn’t have the best relationship with his wife and son. Combine that with Torrance’s stifled career and the isolation of the Overlook Hotel, and his actions are motivated, if deeply wrong.
The Babadook is similar in that regard. It’s about a widowed mother, Amelia, whose young son, Samuel, has behavioral problems. Samuel becomes convinced that a monster called The Babadook is after him, and he acts out. Amelia begins to have visions of the monster and becomes unsure of what’s real and what’s not. She begins to turn against her son. Like Torrance, her actions are profoundly wrong, but the audience understands them. Both characters embody an extreme version of the frustrations many parents feel toward their children.
The many movies that inspired ‘The Babadook’
The Babadook director Jennifer Kent said that the similarities between The Shining and The Babadook were no accident. During a 2014 interview with Empire, a reporter told Kent that her film had more depth than most horror films. “Yeah,” she replied. “I think there are many films in every genre that don’t mean anything, but for some reason horror tends to attract a lot of those stories, and also gets a bad rap for being a rubbish genre.
“I think if people think sensitively and seriously about films in this canon, like The Shining and Let the Right One In, even going back to Vampyr and Nosferatu, there’s a real depth to those films — and the [Roman] Polanski films as well, the domestic horrors,” she added. “I guess they were my inspiration. I think the very best horror is more than just jump scares and things appearing out of cupboards and women running around half-naked.”
What Jennifer Kent said about the era of horror that produced ‘The Shining’
Furthermore, Kent said she was inspired by the entire era that produced The Shining. “I was really influenced by ’70s and ’80s horror — I watched a lot of those as a kid, way too young, much to my parents’ horror,” she revealed. “It left me terrified but also excited. I think a lot of horror comes from a similar place to fairytales and it deals with myth.”
The Babadook and The Shining tell somewhat similar stories — and they will continue to frighten audiences for generations to come.
