By now, you’re likely to have heard or read about The Babadook, the smart, sleek, and properly scary Australian horror film about a single mother, her oddball son, and the picture book that rips into their life like a waking nightmare. If all you’ve done is hear or read about it, however, let me be the hundredth to urge you to rise above your hard-earned hype antipathy, brave the traffic (speaking of horrors), and get to the Uptown to see it while you can. First-time feature director Jennifer Kent manages to deliver the cheap-but-not-that-cheap genre thrills of the post-Hammer, moderate goth, fairy tale strain of horror while/by accessing a real-world emotional darkness that continues to lurk in your peripherals long after the lights go up. Given the loud chorus of praise greeting Kent and her film at the moment, I was grateful for the chance to ask her a few questions on the phone yesterday.

THE STRANGER: The germ of The Babadook first showed up in Monster, the short film you made in 2005. Did it help to have such a long time to let the story develop or was it frustrating?
JENNIFER KENT: Well, I wasn’t thinking about it for that whole time. I had the idea for the short and then I forgot about it. But this idea of facing the darkness is a lifetime fascination. I’m fascinated by people who don’t do it. Someone can carry a secret or a painful experience for like decades, or their whole life. So while Monster was successful and embraced, it didn’t really delve into those areas that I wanted to go. About three years before we shot Babadook, I went back and thought, "Maybe there’s a feature film in there." I asked myself, "What would happen if you pushed down on some grief or difficult feeling for so long and with so much strength that it developed an energy and split off from you?" That was the premise, the way it looked, and moved, and felt developed as the film developed. Once I made that connection, it all came very effortlessly.

Monster - Jennifer Kent from Jennifer Kent on Vimeo.

More Qs and As after the jump.

It seems like such a delicate balance between the metaphorical and literal elements in the film—like if any one piece of the design hadn’t rung true, you’d have been left with nothing.
That was one of my choices for going more lo-fi with all the special effects. I insisted on all the special effects being done in-camera because I wanted that kind of primal rough feeling you get in fairy tales. Even down to the book—I didn’t want it to look like it was produced by Faber & Faber. We’re making the book now, and I don’t want any publishing marks on it. I want to keep it very pure [laughs]. Pure and frightening. But everything came through that idea: The human elements of the film are the most important things to me. I’m very moved by that woman and her story and her difficulties, and so every design choice, every camera choice, and the book itself were all there to support that.

I’m curious about the main character, Amelia, who is obviously haunted by unresolved bereavement issues, not just being forced to take care of this difficult, weird, violent child, but then also working as a nurse in an old folks' home—she’s surrounded by vulnerability and death. Is she hiding or is she cornered?
I’m very influenced by my family in that regard. I come from a family of carers. My brother’s a doctor. Two of my sisters are nurses. My other sister’s a teacher. All these caring, nurturing professions. And we were brought up Catholic, which is like the epitome of altruism. And that’s all fine. But the shadow side of that is the thing of “oh, I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine” when you’re not fine. Putting yourself out for other people at the expense of yourself. It’s not unique to Catholicism. It’s pretty inherent in women in many parts of the world. We do it a lot, and what results is a nasty shadow side of anger and resentment and rage. And in this case, it’s directed at a child. Who’s innocent! He didn’t ask for his father to die while he was being born… I guess what I’m saying is: Better for a woman to be a little difficult than to be so “nice” all the time.

Well, the idea that if you’re not suffering you’re probably doing something wrong may not exclusively Catholic, but it is a key ingredient in the recipe.
Exactly! It’s such a weird religion, and so far-reaching. This is just a quick aside, but with the success of the film, I’m brought up to be suspicious of that… It’s funny: It really is all about suffering, isn’t it? I mean, suffering’s a given. We die, we’re human, whatever. But I don’t think we’re brought onto the earth just to suffer. The Catholic approach is all a bit ass-end-backwards.

I think your film identifies a primal dread among children of single mothers. As they grow older and realize what a burden they were, they realize that underneath all the love and support and sacrifice and work, there is, or was, the potential for violent, almost supernatural rage. I may be projecting, I know, but—
Well, I don’t think it’s peculiar to single parents, though it is intensified. It’s a primal thing that fairy tales work on, as well. That’s why there are so many witches in fairy tales. It’s about exploring the feminine in that way. Almost all kids go through a point, between the ages of two and four, where they believe their mothers to be witches. It’s the fear of the other, and the fear of this institution of love and nurturing going off the rails.

The mother-son relationship tends to be sanctified and sentimentalized in films. I was struck by the fact that during the early part of The Babadook, you really are on Amelia’s side, because the kid is such a frustrating brat.
We don’t want to look at the cracks in motherhood. It seems to be a given: You need to be a good mother, you will be a good mother, end of story, book closed. And it’s not the truth. My brother has eight kids. I remember seeing his wife looking at their firstborn like she was an alien. I saw the look of fear on her face. She’s grown into an incredible mother, but it’s not a given. From what I’ve seen from the outside, motherhood is a treacherous path that contains many disappointments. It requires a lot of sublimation of one’s own goals and dreams in order to nurture another human being. That’s a big core, and I really wanted to explore it honestly in this film. It was important that that child was annoying initially because I wanted people to feel enough for Amelia that when she started to go bonkers they’d stay with her. Instead of judging her, we’re fighting with her because she’s losing her mind—or being taken over, whichever way you want to look at it… It’s one of the big taboos. I thought I would get a lot of criticism from women for showing a mother that was far from perfect, but I’ve just had a collective sigh of relief. It’s one of the reasons that has made the film so worthwhile to me, fighting for that character to remain what we call in Australia “unlikable.”

Speaking of likable and unlikable, are you tired of receiving praise yet?
It’s been an enormous honor to have the film be so well-received. I’d be an idiot to complain.