Don’t count on letting Mr. Babadook in again anytime soon.
It was a slow burn for writer/director Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook to become well-known as a seminal piece of horror, as it was first unleashed at film festivals in 2014 and, through its availability on streaming services, began to take hold of audiences’ nightmares in more significant ways. The mysterious mythology of the character would make it seem like there were endless ways in which to expand that lore, especially as the movie grows more popular, but Kent herself confirmed that, even with the profitability of such an endeavor, she’s never considered returning to that world. The Babadook returns to theaters on September 19th, and a filmed conversation between Jennifer Kent and two-time Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón will follow each screening.
“[Producer] Kristina [Ceyton] and I, we could have made millions out of sequels,” Kent confirmed to ComicBook. “Absolutely. Like, no doubt. But we just … Kristina knew that I didn’t want to make a sequel. She knew that when we signed the contracts early on. We were lucky enough to have the rights, which now is really hard for filmmakers. It’s often a trade off to give away the rights to you or to any future endeavors in order to get the first one made. But with this, I just explored what I wanted to say. It just doesn’t feel like a … You know, it could have been, but I think everyone would be really sick of Mr. Babadook by now.”
The Babadook is described, “Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her ‘out of control’ six-year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible to love. Samuel’s dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called ‘The Babadook’ turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he’s been dreaming about. His hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son’s behavior, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real.”
In addition to the effectiveness of the film, the timing of its release was just as helpful in making it such a hit, as it was unveiled at a time in which more surface-level scares were being delivered to mainstream audiences, with The Babadook‘s metaphorical horrors impacting its accessibility. Kent detailed how even some of the figures who were financing the movie tried to make major changes to the project at the last minute.
“As a first-time filmmaker, you don’t know if you’re going to get through [the experience],” the filmmaker detailed. “Every day is a new experience, terrifying, vomit-inducing terror. And then it was just made, and I felt very happy with it because I had final cut. I’m very adamant as a filmmaker to have authorship of the film. I think if that film was taken away from me, it would have been destroyed, because very late in the editing process, we had a lot of criticism. People hated the film. People who had given us money did not like the film, and it was only because myself and the producers had final cut that we were able to protect that.”
The Babadook returns to theaters on September 19th, and a filmed conversation between Jennifer Kent and two-time Academy Award winner Alfonso Cuarón will follow each screening.
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