Interview: Jennifer Kent Talks The Babadook’s 10th Anniversary Rerelease

ComingSoon Editor-in-Chief Tyler Treese spoke to The Babadook director Jennifer Kent about the film’s legacy and its upcoming rerelease. In honor of the 10th anniversary of the iconic indie horror movie, it will return to theaters featuring an exclusive Q&A with Kent. There will be nationwide theatrical showings on September 19 and 22, thanks to IFC Films and Iconic Events.

“Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her ‘out of control’ 6 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,” says the synopsis.

Tyler Treese: Jennifer, I can’t believe it’s been 10 years since The Babadook came out. Some creatives don’t like to look back, they leave stuff behind. How has this experience been celebrating the 10th anniversary, looking back, and revisiting this great film of yours?

Jennifer Kent: Well, initially, I thought, “Oh, I don’t want to, you know, get involved in that.” Then IFC approached me and said, “We want to do a rerelease.” They’ve put so much thought and care into it. Now I’m really excited. I’m coming to America next week to be part of some Q&As. Yeah, I’m thrilled. As a filmmaker, we just hope that our films get seen and for a film to be remembered 10 years later, it’s pretty wonderful.

Something that’s particularly unique about The Babadook is that people come out of it wanting to discuss its themes and really talk about it. I watched this yesterday with my girlfriend, and she rarely is like, “Hey, let’s talk about the themes.” But immediately, she started wanting to break things down and give our reads on stuff. There’s something really special about this film that just resonates with people, and they really want to engage with it.

Had she seen it before?

No, it was her first time.

It only released on a couple of screens in America at any one time when it was first released. So my hope is that people who’ve never seen it come out to check it out in the cinema. When I wrote it, I was hoping to speak to something deeper about the human condition and about loss. I just lost my dad pretty shortly before I started writing. So I was in that space of contemplating what it’s like to lose someone and what it would be like to lose someone so dear to you and not be able to grieve that.

That’s how the sort of genesis of the film came about. The story is that what if this woman could not feel anything that she had to feel because it was just too scary and too painful and so she just suppressed it all until it’s kind of split off from her and became something else altogether.

The film’s legacy at this point is kind of interesting because there are just as many memes as there are super deep readings and critical deep dives. Why do you think people are able to engage with this both very scholarly, but also have such fun with it? Normally it’s one or the other.

To know that it’s being taught at some universities here and it’s kind of crazy. But then people obviously hate it, which is all part of it as well. It’s like, they can’t stand that film. I mean, that’s very much the horror crowd to kind of diss a lot of the films of the horror canon. So you kind of roll with that. But I think it’s just amazing that it’s still being talked about and that it has become a meme and it has become so recognizable.

Because when I made it, initially, the people around me, not the people making the film but financiers and other people, said, “You can’t call a film The Babadook. No one’s ever going to remember that.” So I feel sort of quietly vindicated of that criticism because it’s not true. People have remembered the name for sure.

You mentioned earlier that it was released very sparingly in US theaters. For a lot of people, they’re gonna be seeing it in the theaters for the very first time, which is really exciting. There’s just a magic to seeing some of your favorite films on the big screen. So just how does that feel knowing that people are excited to go see this in the way it was intended?

It seems to be that there’s this resurgence of people going back to the cinema. I think it’s something that we crave as humans. Like I have a Cinémathèque in the city that I live here in Australia, and they show free films as much as possible. The films are free, there’s no charge. In the last month, I’ve seen so many fantastic films. I saw a Robert Bresson retrospective of his films. They’re almost 60-70 years old now, but they’re incredible. I also saw 2001: A Space Odyssey last Friday night, and the cinema was packed.

To feel and be a part of a collective response to a film, there’s nothing like it. Actually, I can’t do without it, you know? It’s something I really seek out. My hope [with the rerelease] is that people come back and that there are big audiences and they’re experiencing it collectively. Because it’s a different experience.

It is definitely special. What’s also special in this film is Essie Davis’ performance. What a wonder. When you were working with her and seeing just the grief that she’s able to portray and the breaking of this character, how was that working with her and really building the character? It’s a wonderful performance.

She’s such an underrated actress, I find. I was an actress. I went to drama school, acting school with Essie. She was in the year below me. And so I knew her. She was a dear friend. There’s nothing like working with a friend, like working with your best buddy, to make a film. It was really special. I think she trusted me in a way that it can take a while for an actor to trust a director. We just slipped into that sort of instantly. So I was able to push her into those places, which she was very willing to go to, and she felt safe and protected.

You had The Nightingale come out after The Babadook. What were the biggest lessons that you really learned from The Babadook that you’ve really been able to employ in your work since then?

I think I was more sort of self-assured. The Nightingale, which I’m enormously proud of, was a very difficult film to make. It was also a low budget. I mean, Babadook was $1.6 [million]. Nightingale was a lot more than that, but it was still, I think, around $10 million, which is [not a lot]. We had 17 wilderness locations. We had to shoot in autumn [and] winter where there’s not very many daylight hours. We were up mountains, and we didn’t fake any of that.

So I learned to probably keep my cool a bit more and to trust. Once you’ve made a film, you know you can make a film. With Babadook, I didn’t know if I could make a film. I was just sort of going on a wing and a prayer. But, yeah, I think, I think it was more of a confidence.

Fans have been eager to know what’s next. Do you know what your next project is? Are you working on something?

Yes, I do. I can’t say what it is because we’re not allowed to release it. It’s probably gonna be released in about two weeks. But what I can say is that it’s a famous horror writer, an adaptation of one of his books, and it’s not Stephen King.

Tyler Treese

Tyler Treese is ComingSoon and SuperHeroHype's Editor-in-Chief. An experienced entertainment journalist, his work can be seen at Sherdog, Fanbyte, Rock Paper Shotgun, and more. When not watching the latest movies, Treese enjoys mixed martial arts and playing with his Shiba Inu, Kota.