Spirits Do Come Back

Abstract

This chapter explores the ways in which The Babadook (Jennifer Kent 2014), in its deft and complex intertextual weaving, is not so much a Gothic narrative, as a story of a mother and son trapped inside a Gothic milieu. It argues that The Babadook's dark texture and intertexuality are best understood through a relatively unusual relationship within Australian cinema traditions, one which is perhaps most evident in the film's use of enclosed chambers. A further unusual aspect of The Babadook is its explicit referencing of films of the early cinema period that Tom Gunning (2012) calls the ‘cinema of attractions’, including the work of French illusionist Georges Méliès and Victorian magician Howard Thurston. In contrast to the recurring trope in Australian horror cinema of the uncanny and haunted rural landscape, The Babadook articulates its Gothic aesthetic through the eerie claustrophobia of monstrous domestic imagery.

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