Why The Babadook Is My Favorite Movie

(Warning: Spoilers of The Babadook below, as well as discussion of a scary movie! If you don’t like scary movies, you may not want to read more. If you do like scary movies but haven’t seen The Babadook, come back after you have seen it! You will enjoy it more that way, I promise.)

I love horror as a genre. I have watched The Walking Dead more times than I can count. I love movies like It Follows. Stephen King is one of my favorite authors, and I could read It over and over again. As long as there’t not too much blood or gore, I’m probably going to be into it.

But my favorite horror film of all time is The Babadook. Many of my clients don’t share my love for horror, and I never want to pressure someone to watch a scary movie they won’t enjoy. But if my client tells me they like scary movies but they haven’t seen The Babadook, I will strongly suggest they watch it. The Babadook is a great film about a scary ghoul who won’t live a grieving widow and her young son alone. It’s creepy, atmospheric, and has great jump scares. But my very favorite part of the movie is the end. (Warning: Here come the spoilers! Stop reading here if you haven’t seen The Babadook! I will include a big image below to give you time to click away and return here after you’ve seen it!)

Here are the major spoilers for this blog post. At the end of the film, the widow stops the babadook from possessing her and terrorizing her child. But she doesn’t banish or vanquish the monster. Instead, the film shows her and her son collecting earth worms together, which she takes down to her basement alone. The babadook is down there. The babadook, as a scary monster, tries to frighten her. But she stands her ground, calmly and confidently leaving the bowl of worms for the monster to eat.

This ending always gives me chills because I think it is such a great metaphor for our recovery from mental health concerns. So many of us start our recovery journey by wanting to get rid of something. Often times, we want to get rid of certain thoughts, feelings, memories, or experiences. Maybe we want to get rid of our anxiety, or our depression, or our negative body image thoughts. Maybe we want to get rid of our painful memories of past trauma or abuse. A lot of therapies and therapists and healing modalities promise just this: Less anxiety in 90 days! Get rid of depression forever!

Unfortunately, I don’t think we can get rid of our experiences this way. Our nervous system does not have a delete button. We can’t surgically remove our anxiety, or our sadness, or certain thoughts, or our memories. I’m willing to bet you have tried lots and lots of things to get rid of whatever is ailing you. These things might have worked in the short-run, but I’m going to bet nothing has permanently gotten rid of your painful thoughts, feelings, memories, or experiences in the long-run. And this isn’t because you are doing anything wrong. This is just because we can’t get rid of painful experiences this way.

What we can do is learn to relate to them differently. Ironically, when we accept what we don’t want and stop spending all of our energy fighting against it, we loosen its control over us.

Here’s an example: Let’s imagine I sometimes have the painful thought, “I’m a bad person,” and every time I have this thought, I feel sad. So, very logically, whenever I have this painful thought, I either try to avoid it (“Just don’t think about being a bad person - think about something better instead. Let’s go on Instagram to distract ourself!”), or I think about it endlessly with the intention of trying to resolve it and make it go away (“Why am I having that thought? Am I really a bad person? If I could just figure out if I am, maybe I wouldn’t think about it so much. Well, I did cheat on that exam when I was 12… But I also donate to the Humane Society! So I’m a good person! But am I, really? I did lie to my friend last week…”). The really ironic part is that whenever I try to get rid of this thought or get lost in it trying to figure it out, I am suddenly spending even more time and energy on it, and I am giving that thought a lot more control over me.

Instead, if I recognize that “I’m a bad person” is just a thought, observe that I am having that thought, notice the feeling of sadness that thought brings up for me, and then return to doing what matters, I am suddenly giving that thought a lot less control over me. For instance, imagine I am having a great dinner out with friends when I notice I am having the thought, “I’m a bad person.” I notice that this thought brings up a feeling of sadness, I allow that thought and that feeling of sadness to be there, and I continue the dinner with my friends because being present with the people I care about is what matters to me. In this scenario, I am not fighting my painful thought and feeling. I am accepting that they are here with me as I spend time with friends. At the same time, I am not getting lost in my painful thought or feeling, either. I am non-judgmentally observing them while I continue to live my life according to what matters to me. My thoughts and feelings are there, but they are not running the show. I am.

I think of this like having the Babadook in my basement. In this metaphor, the Babadook represents the painful thoughts, feelings, memories, and experiences I sometimes have as a human being. I can’t get rid of my Babadook. It’s there, right in the basement, in the house where I sleep every night. I accept it is there. I am not fighting its presence. And because I do not fight it, because I allow it to be there, it cannot possess me and take me over, like it does to the widow earlier in the movie. Acceptance is the key.

What do you think of the metaphor of the Babadook? What is your Babadook? What could you allow to be in your basement?