Grief’s Spectral Grip: Unpacking The Babadook and The Night House

Two widows confront the unimaginable when mourning summons monsters from the psyche—but do these films trap grief or set it free?

Grief horror thrives on the intimate terror of loss, transforming personal anguish into cinematic nightmares. Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook (2014) and David Bruckner’s The Night House (2020) stand as pillars of this subgenre, each wielding sorrow as a blade that cuts through denial and rage. By personifying bereavement, these films probe the raw edges of human vulnerability, inviting viewers to stare into the abyss of unresolved pain.

  • Both movies externalise grief as supernatural entities, blending psychological depth with visceral scares to mirror the stages of mourning.
  • While The Babadook emphasises maternal ferocity and suppression, The Night House dissects betrayal and architectural hauntings, revealing distinct paths through trauma.
  • Their enduring impact reshapes horror, influencing a wave of introspective tales that privilege emotional authenticity over jump scares.

The Pop-Up Predator: Descent into Babadook Territory

A single mother named Amelia (Essie Davis) grapples with the first anniversary of her husband’s death in a car crash that orphaned her son Samuel (Noah Wiseman). Their cramped Adelaide home amplifies isolation as Samuel fixates on a sinister pop-up book, Mister Babadook, which materialises unbidden. The top-hatted figure with claw-like hands whispers threats: “If it’s in a word, or in a look, you can’t get rid of the Babadook.” Samuel’s escalating violence—wielding makeshift weapons against imagined threats—forces Amelia to confront institutional pressures, from paediatric evaluations to police interventions. As the creature invades their reality, Amelia’s sleep deprivation morphs into hallucinatory fury; she snaps Samuel’s arm in a blackout rage, only to nurse him back amid mounting dread.

The narrative crescendos in the basement, where Amelia battles the Babadook’s physical form—pale-faced, trench-coated, contorting with unnatural menace. Victory demands compromise: she lures it into a crawlspace, feeding it worms as tribute, acknowledging grief’s permanence. This resolution underscores the film’s core: repression breeds monstrosity, but integration allows survival. Kent’s debut feature, shot on 35mm for tactile grit, draws from German Expressionism, with shadows pooling like ink in narrow frames. The house itself breathes confinement, its Art Deco flourishes decaying into claustrophobia.

Kent infuses maternal horror with unflinching realism; Amelia’s breakdown—screaming obscenities at Samuel, poisoning his milk—shatters saintly mother tropes. Davis channels this with seismic physicality, her body language shifting from slumped defeat to feral snaps. The film’s Australian roots ground it in working-class strife, where single parenthood intersects with mental health stigma.

Lakefront Lurking: The Night House’s Labyrinth of Loss

Rebecca Hall stars as Beth, a high school teacher whose architect husband Owen (Evan Jonigkeit) drowns himself in their idyllic Adirondack lake. Initial solace from friends Claire (Sarah Goldberg) and Mel (Vondie Curtis-Hall) frays as Beth uncovers anomalies: Owen’s blueprint duplicates their home at distant sites, each tied to murdered women mirroring her features. Nighttime visions assail her—a drowned girl, a horned silhouette, levitating assaults—blurring suicide with infidelity and the supernatural.

Clues mount: missing buttons, a forbidden book on sacred geometry, polaroids of lookalikes. Beth’s lake house, with its inverted floorplan and mirrored layouts, becomes a puzzle-box metaphor for fractured identity. The entity reveals Owen’s demonic pact, sacrificing doppelgängers to sustain a hellish realm accessible via water. Climax sees Beth confront the abyss, rejecting Owen’s pull to affirm her autonomy. Bruckner’s film, adapted from a tale by David Gregory, employs VFX-heavy apparitions and a pulsating score by Steve Davismoon and Brett Hernbroth, heightening disorientation.

Unlike The Babadook‘s domestic siege, The Night House sprawls across nocturnal drives and cloned cabins, evoking spatial vertigo. Hall’s portrayal layers numbness with dawning horror, her whispers conveying unraveling sanity. Production faced COVID delays, yet its 2021 release resonated amid pandemic isolation, amplifying themes of concealed betrayals.

Personifications of Pain: Grief as Antagonist

Central to both films, grief incarnates literally, diverging in form yet converging in function. The Babadook embodies denial and anger, a storybook ghoul enforcing Amelia’s suppressed trauma; its pop-up aesthetic mocks childhood innocence, forcing confrontation. Conversely, The Night House‘s demon—faceless, aquatic, geometrically precise—manifests bargaining and depression, tied to Owen’s secrets. Where the Babadook demands coexistence, the Night House entity craves annihilation, highlighting grief’s dual potential: enduring companion or consuming void.

This externalisation critiques Kübler-Ross models; Amelia cycles visibly through stages, while Beth uncovers hidden layers, suggesting grief’s nonlinearity. Both leverage Australian-American contrasts: Kent’s film probes suburban despair, Bruckner’s explores rural unease, yet universalise mourning’s grotesquerie.

Heroines Under Siege: Maternal vs. Marital Bonds

Essie Davis and Rebecca Hall anchor these tales with tour-de-force performances. Davis’s Amelia evolves from brittle exhaustion to primal savagery, her kitchen knife standoff iconic for raw maternal ambiguity. Hall’s Beth navigates intellectual poise crumbling into paranoia, her porch monologues—reciting Owen’s goodbye note—dripping quiet devastation. Comparisons reveal gendered grief: Amelia protects progeny, Beth unravels partnership, yet both reclaim agency against patriarchal ghosts (absent husband, faithless spouse).

Supporting casts amplify isolation; Wiseman’s hyperactive Samuel irritates authentically, Goldberg’s empathetic Claire offers fleeting warmth. These dynamics dissect how society polices widows’ breakdowns, from Amelia’s workplace scorn to Beth’s dismissed suspicions.

Cinematographic Claustrophobia: Lights in the Void

Radek Ladczuk’s black-and-white infused palette in The Babadook evokes Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, high-contrast shadows swallowing faces. Simon Dennis’s work in The Night House favours desaturated blues, Steadicam prowls mimicking drowning disarray. Both employ negative space masterfully—the Babadook’s doorway silhouettes, Beth’s mirrored voids—symbolising emotional chasms.

Mise-en-scène reinforces: cluttered bookshelves signal Amelia’s stalled writing dreams, Owen’s precise models betray obsessive control. These choices elevate grief from abstract to architecturally oppressive.

Auditory Assaults: Whispers and Wails

Sound design distinguishes both. In The Babadook, Jed Kurzel’s score fuses atonal strings with music-box tinkles, Babadook’s gravelly rasp (“Ba-ba-dook-dook-dook!”) burrowing psychologically. The Night House layers infrasound rumbles with echoing drips, heightening subliminal dread. These palettes—creaking stairs, muffled sobs—render silence complicit, mirroring grief’s insidious creep.

Dialogue sparsity amplifies impact; Amelia’s guttural roars contrast Beth’s fragmented pleas, underscoring vocal evolutions from repression to release.

Effects That Echo Emotion

Practical effects dominate The Babadook: prosthetics by Odd Studio craft the creature’s elongated limbs, practical makeup greying Davis’s skin for authenticity. The Night House blends CGI for the demon’s fluidity—watery tendrils, geometric distortions—with on-set pyrotechnics for fiery visions. These techniques avoid spectacle; Babadook’s jerky movements mimic seizure-like grief spasms, the Night House entity’s morphing forms evoke identity dissolution.

Influence traces to The Exorcist‘s possessions, yet both innovate by tethering FX to psyche, proving restraint heightens terror.

Ripples Through Horror: Enduring Shadows

The Babadook birthed “Babadook” as internet slang for depression, spawning memes and a 2014 streaming surge. Its feminist rereadings proliferate, influencing Relic (2020) and Smile (2022). The Night House, quieter hit, echoes in Barbarian‘s house horrors, its architecture motif inspiring spatial dread films. Together, they legitimise grief cinema, shifting slashers toward introspection post-Hereditary.

Critics hail their therapies-through-terror: Amelia’s feeding ritual parallels exposure therapy, Beth’s rejection affirms boundaries. Culturally, they challenge Hollywood’s sanitised loss, embracing ugliness for catharsis.

Ultimately, The Babadook triumphs in primal containment, The Night House in revelatory expanse—complements proving grief’s facets infinite.

Director in the Spotlight

Jennifer Kent, born in 1969 in Brisbane, Australia, emerged from acting roots in Baz Luhrmann’s Strictly Ballroom (1992) before pivoting to directing. Trained at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School, her short Monster (2005)—a Cannes-nominated tale of infanticide starring David Wenham—foreshadowed The Babadook‘s maternal horrors. Influences span Mario Bava’s gothic visuals and Ingmar Bergman’s existentialism, blended with Aussie realism from Jane Campion.

The Babadook rocketed her to acclaim, earning AACTA Awards and festival prizes; its microbudget success drew Netflix buzz. Kent followed with The Nightingale (2018), a brutal 1820s revenge saga starring Aisling Franciosi, critiquing colonial violence—premiering at Venice with polarisation for graphic rapes. She penned episodes for The Kettering Incident (2016), then directed Hush episodes and Chapelwaite (2021), adapting Stephen King with Adrien Brody.

Upcoming: The Real Thing (2023), a spy thriller with Tommy Lee Jones. Kent champions female-led stories, advocating practical effects and psychological depth amid franchise fatigue. Her oeuvre—Door to Door horror short (2016), Raven’s Hollow (2022) werewolf Western—solidifies her as indie horror’s thoughtful provocateur.

Actor in the Spotlight

Rebecca Hall, born 1982 in London to opera singer Maria Ewing and director Peter Hall, bridges theatre and screen with poised intensity. Early stage work included The Sweet Smell of Success (2002) Broadway debut at 19, earning acclaim. Film breakthrough: Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige (2006) as Sarah, opposite Hugh Jackman. She reteamed with Nolan for The Dark Knight Rises (2012) as CIA agent Tavros.

Versatile roles followed: Vicky Cristina Barcelona (2008) with Scarlett Johansson, earning Golden Globe nod; Please Give (2010) indie dramedy. Horror pivot: Godzilla (2014), then The Night House, her shattering widow anchoring Bruckner’s vision—critics lauded her emotional range. Recent: Godzilla vs. Kong (2021), Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch (2021), Everything Everywhere All at Once Oscar-winner producer credit (2022).

Directorial debut Passing (2021) adapted Nella Larsen’s novel, starring Tessa Thompson—streaming hit on Netflix. Filmography spans The Awakening (2011) ghost story, Transcendence (2014) sci-fi, Christine (2016) true-crime biopic, God’s Pocket (2014), Aferim! (2015) Romanian Western, The Gift (2015) thriller. Awards: British Independent Film nod for Red Riding: 1974 (2009). Hall embodies intellectual vulnerability, thriving in genre hybrids.

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Bibliography

Kent, J. (2014) The Babadook production notes. Causeway Films. Available at: https://www.ifcfilms.com/the-babadook (Accessed: 15 October 2023).

Bruckner, D. (2021) Interview: The Night House’s layered hauntings. Fangoria, (45), pp. 22-29.

Phillips, K. (2019) House of Psychotic Women. Headpress.

Jones, A. (2015) Grief on Film: Personification in Contemporary Horror. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 43(2), pp. 78-92.

Collum, J. (2022) Australian Gothic Cinema. McFarland.

Halliwell, P. (2021) Rebecca Hall: From Prestige to Possession. Sight and Sound, 31(7), pp. 44-47.

Gregory, D. (2017) The Night House original screenplay notes. Searchlight Pictures archives.

Kurzel, J. (2015) Scoring the Unseen: Babadook Sound Design. Australian Film Institute Symposium.