![\"Garry](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/1792668732_838_8eb9106bbf9d4d6f5987a25e6b49627e290edc5a.png\")
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October 22, 2026 \u2014 7:00pm<\/p>\n
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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n No gift articles left<\/p>\n You’ve used all of your gift articles. 3 more will become available on the 1st of every month.<\/p>\n Close<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n The black top hat and cloak. The creepy face. The claw-like feet.<\/p>\n Twelve years after Mister Babadook became a nightmarish figure on screen, terrifying a single mother and her child, writer-director Jennifer Kent<\/a> is delighted that her film The Babadook<\/a> has become not just an Australian classic but a Halloween screening tradition.<\/p>\n \u201cTo have my first film so appreciated and still kicking on is a delight,\u201d Kent says. \u201cI have such a fondness for the whole experience.\u201d<\/p>\n One American critic<\/a> even described The Babadook recently as the best horror film so far this century, not just frightening and unnerving but a groundbreaking feminist pic with stunning psychological depth that shows a woman recovering after suffering.<\/p>\n Kent is preparing to shoot her next film, The Girl Who Was Plugged In, based on a 1973 sci-fi novella by James Tiptree Jr, in Sydney early next year.<\/p>\n Related Article Her first film since returning to horror for The Murmuring, part of the Netflix miniseries Guillermo del Toro\u2019s Cabinet of Curiosities, it will have Sophie Thatcher (Yellowjackets)<\/a> playing a disfigured young woman who is hired to virtually operate a beautiful but brainless \u201cflesh body\u201d to sell products.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s quite spookily about the dilemmas of our modern age, particularly the loss of humanity to technology and to big tech corporations,\u201d Kent says. \u201cI haven\u2019t ever felt such an urgency to make any film as I have with this one.\u201d<\/p>\n But The Babadook\u2019s return to currency \u2013 as part of a Halloween season at Sydney Opera House<\/a> and the puppetry exhibition Lifelike at Melbourne\u2019s Australian Centre for the Moving Image<\/a> \u2013 has Kent reflecting on why it became so acclaimed and influential for later Australian horror films.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d just lost my dad at the time so I was mourning for that big loss,\u201d she says of writing the screenplay. \u201cI threw myself into that grief.\u201d<\/p>\n The Babadook centres on a grieving woman (Essie Davis<\/a>) who battles her young son\u2019s (Noah Wiseman) fear of the freaky vision in their home that is Mister Babadook.<\/p>\n While Australia has been making horror pics since the revival of the film industry in the 1970s, they have often been in the \u201cOzploitation\u201d tradition of scaring the bejesus out of audiences.<\/p>\n After the early impact of psychological horror (Patrick) and the haunting supernatural (arguably Picnic At Hanging Rock), many B-grade examples have featured sharks, crocodiles, other out-of-control animals, zombies, ghosts, vampires, werewolves, cannibals, killer trucks, crazed scientists, serial killers and monsters.<\/p>\n Kent was obsessed with horror films growing up but it wasn\u2019t Australian films that inspired her creatively when she became a director.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was the \u201970s when I was a kid, and it was a little less restrictive on what kids could watch, so I saw all sorts of things,\u201d she says. \u201cI remember being traumatised by Nightmare on Elm Street, the original, and – what\u2019s that slasher movie? Oh my God! \u2013 Friday the 13th.<\/p>\n \u201cThese sorts of films were emblazoned on my mind at a very formative age. As far as Australian films go, probably things like The Howling [while the original was American, the next two sequels were directed by Australian Philippe Mora] and Razorback but it wasn\u2019t such a big genre when I was a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n The Babadook was a highly successful Australian example of \u201celevated horror\u201d \u2013 films that use the genre to address social issues. It took Get Out, about middle-class white racism, to a best picture nomination at the Oscars in 2018 and describes such later Australian films as The Invisible Man, Talk To Me, Bring Her Back and Leviticus.<\/p>\n While she thinks it was rare for an Australian horror film to centre on a mother at the time, Kent does not see The Babadook as groundbreaking.<\/p>\n \u201cI look back to a tradition of horror that started in silent cinema,\u201d she says. \u201cThat was my playground and inspiration for The Babadook. There are a lot of films in the tradition … that deal with the human condition really deeply. I think horror is built for that.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been relegated at times to B-grade films but it\u2019s at its best when it has depth.\u201d<\/p>\n One direct influence for Kent was the 1961 gothic and psychological horror film The Innocents, which had Deborah Kerr as a governess whose job looking after two orphans at a country estate takes a very dark turn.<\/p>\n \u201cIt has a woman of a certain age going quietly insane or is she being visited by something?,\u201d Kent says. \u201cI was very intrigued and inspired by films that were both psychological and supernatural.<\/p>\n \u201cThey could be read [as] either\/or and still be bulletproof. An obvious example of that is The Shining. You can read it as a haunting or you can read it as a man going mad. Or you can see it as both.\u201d<\/p>\n While The Babadook flopped in Australian cinemas, it was recognised as a visionary film overseas.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was just apathy audience-wise and also distributor-wise,\u201d Kent says. \u201cPrior to that time, there was quite a snobbery towards horror. Now the only thing that ends up in cinemas is horror \u2013 elevated horror if you want to use that term.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article<\/p>\n At the AACTA Awards, where The Babadook controversially tied with The Water Diviner<\/a> for best film, she says people were \u201clining up to apologise for not really understanding the film in development or even in production \u2013 it\u2019s funny that we need awards to authenticate the value of something \u2013 but I took it graciously.\u201d<\/p>\n The Babadook found an appreciative Australian audience when it started streaming. Kent thinks horror has become easier to make in Australia because of it and other films around the same time.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was very hard for us to make but if it\u2019s paved the way for other filmmakers to get their films made \u2013 I\u2019m really thrilled,\u201d she says. \u201cHorror is one of the most impactful forms in cinema.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s the closest to dream. Cinema is dream. It can be documentary, as well, but it really lends itself to these kinds of worlds that are not completely realistic.\u201d<\/p>\n The Babadook is screening, with an introduction by Jennifer Kent, at Sydney Opera House as part of the Hellhouse season<\/a> of horror films from October 27 to 31. In Melbourne, The Babadook is in the Lifelike exhibition<\/a> of puppetry on screen at Australian Centre for the Moving Image from November 20. <\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Jennifer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/117882eb8606822b07b735b5c292e1b920303de6.jpeg\")
Jennifer Kent, bottom right, with images from The Babadook.Aresna Villanueva\/Umbrella\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\n![\"Jennifer](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/30f04c01e57ec4d2d7f98189e1e857b44c759e16.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/796a151335295093875ccd3a2becd1d0572463d1.jpeg\")
The terrifying Mister Babadook as shown in a frame from the pop-up book featured in The Babadook.<\/p>\n![\"Director](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/cd8365c38f6695bfe8a52dc57246333fb18e38e4.jpeg\")
Director Jennifer Kent with the special jury prize she won for The Nightingale at the Venice Film Festival in 2018.AP<\/p>\n