The Babadook

Jennifer Kent first shot this story as a black and white 2005 short, Monster, which she says holds the seed of The Babadook; it came from a friend whose child insisted a creature was after him. Kent also brings up her own grief at losing her father. The house was built because Adelaide has no such architecture. The interior of a Victorian terrace went up on a sound stage, the exterior in North Adelaide. The palette was cut to blue, burgundy and black through to white, with no gels and no grading, so it reads as a sealed box. The opening half accumulates sleeplessness rather than scares; until the book arrives you watch wear, not incident. Every effect is in camera: Kent insisted on stop motion and tricks from the Méliès era. Noah Wiseman was six and was never on set for the scenes where Essie Davis screams; a kneeling adult stood in, so the fear is carried by the mother’s face, not a child’s reaction. In Australia it opened on thirteen screens, finding its audience abroad. A good fit if you accept an ending that locks the creature in the basement and feeds it worms rather than killing it. Not for anyone waiting on jump scares; the effects are handmade on purpose and work through odd movement, not noise.