Have you ever pondered, of all those joyful times you spent as a child, a teenager, a young adult, and you eventually have to be a parent?
All those joyful memories stripped away from you for the sake of the transition to being a parent, to withhold a huge responsibility.
While the lot of us are gladdened by the blessing, to raise a child is by no means an easy task, and to raise a mentally disturbed one is arduous, but to raise one as a single parent, would be, well, horrifying, especially when one is able to see "monsters" and will often wake you up in the middle of the night saying there's a monster under the bed. There are no other movies than "The Babadook" which perfectly
the struggles of a single parent to raise a child, in this case, a mother who has to raise a "mentally-disturbed" son.

The Babadook, released back in 2014 was directed and written by Jennifer Kent who used to be an Australian actress, but since lost her interest in acting, pursued the art of filmmaking instead. The supernatural psychological horror film is based on her own short film, "Monster" released back in 2005.

(Essie David as the mother and Noah Wiseman as her son)

ABOUT THE FILM

The story revolves around Amelia Vanek (portrayed by Essie David) on having to raise her son, Samuel (portrayed by Noah Wiseman)
after the passing of her husband in a car accident. The problem begins when Samuel claims that he can see an imaginary "monster" usually
during very late at night. He often wakes his mother up telling her that there's a monster coming for both of them, he reached that level where he even built a weapon to fight the monster. This one day he asks his mother to read him a disturbing book that his mother has never seen before, called The Babadook, the book itself had only a few pages of a poem with disturbing illustrations of a monster-like figure which claimed to be the Babadook and Samuel was convinced that it was the monster came seeking for them.

(One of the scary illustrations in the book, The Babadook)

Essie Davis did a magnificent job of portraying the struggle of a single mother overcoming the stress of having to raise Samuel alone,
Despite everything that Babadook did, she tried her very best to protect her only child, costing her own sanity at some point.
Throughout the movie, the audience would surely feel anxious and unnerving on having to watch Amelia struggling to take care of her son, the tension is almost too real and can be felt by the audience themselves because, in truth, these things can happen in real life.

(Samuel using the weapon that he built against the Babadook)

In a way, this movie did not necessarily simply portrayed a monster who simply came with bloodlust to kill people. Instead, it reflects on
the stress and the struggles of a single parent, on how they try to overcome it. The monster Babadook can be seen as an illusion of
Amelia's own grief and how she isn't able to give in to what happened to her husband. Many single parents can surely at some point relate to this movie because it portrayed the idea of being a single parent almost too perfectly.

Despite the horrifying look, Babadook somehow became an icon the in LGBT community when the movie was categorized as an LGBT movie in Netflix. People started using Babadook as a symbol during Pride Month ( the month of June was chosen as the Pride Month to promote the LGBT community). What started as a joke saying that Babadook is a gay character,
It eventually became a symbol for the community.

The Babadook is surely a movie that's worth watching, nominated and won numerous awards including the "Best Film" in the
4th AACTA (Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards) and has an outstanding rating of 98% from Rotten Tomatoes. This movie is beautiful in its own way and be prepared to be haunted by the Babadook.

"If it's in a word, or it's in a look you can't get rid of The Babadook"