40 Fun Facts About The Babadook

In The Babadook, what kind of bedtime reading, titled Mister Babadook, introduces the creature to Amelia and Sam?

A pop-up book carries the creature into the house, and the prop was made by American illustrator Alexander Juhasz, hired specially for the film.

In The Babadook, which item of headwear does the creature in the storybook wear with his suit?

A top hat and suit make up his look in the story, where he grows more sinister and menacing with each page turned.

Critics widely read the creature in The Babadook as a metaphor for which emotion that Amelia has tried to bury?

Grief is the real monster, as one reviewer put it, and the film suggests that suppressing it only makes it stronger.

At the end of The Babadook, what do Amelia and Sam gather in the garden to feed the creature?

Worms go into a bowl that Amelia carries down to the creature, which takes the meal and retreats to its corner instead of attacking her.

Which long-running animated series spoofed The Babadook as The Pookadook in a 2022 Halloween special?

The Simpsons had Marge read Maggie the sinister bedtime story, with the spirit feeding on her resentment at being taken for granted.

Which streaming service appeared, in a viral 2016 screenshot, to list The Babadook among its LGBT films?

Netflix seemed to have filed the horror film among its LGBT titles, and the running joke turned the creature into a tongue-in-cheek queer icon.

Which director of The Exorcist said in 2014 that he had never seen a more terrifying film than The Babadook?

William Friedkin went further in the same burst of praise, ranking the newcomer alongside Psycho, Alien and Diabolique.

Which Australian actress plays Amelia, the exhausted widow and single mother at the centre of The Babadook?

Essie Davis earned Best Actress nominations from the Saturn Awards and the Online Film Critics Society for the role.

To protect its six-year-old star, who did The Babadook's lead actress really shout at in the abusive scenes?

An adult stand-in knelt in the boy's place for those shots, because the director refused to destroy a childhood to make her film.

Which crowdfunding site did the makers of The Babadook use to raise 30,000 US dollars for building its sets?

Kickstarter backers, 259 of them, edged the campaign just past its target, closing a gap in the money for design and special effects.

In The Babadook, how did Amelia's husband die on the day their son Sam was born?

In a car crash, as he drove Amelia to hospital while she was in labour, so the boy's birthday doubles as the anniversary of the death.

In which part of the house does Amelia finally lock away the creature at the end of The Babadook?

The basement becomes its home after a furious Amelia confronts it and forces it to retreat, and she later goes down there to soothe it.

What is the name of the family dog that the possessed Amelia kills in The Babadook?

Bugsy was played by a dog named Hachi, who is credited in the cast list alongside the human actors.

In The Babadook, what does Amelia find in her food and at first blame on Sam?

Shards of glass turn up in her meal as strange events begin in the house, and Sam insists the creature from the storybook is responsible.

In The Babadook, from where does Sam push his cousin Ruby after she bullies him at a birthday party?

A tree house is the scene of the fall, at Ruby's own birthday party, and she comes away from it with a broken nose.

In The Babadook, what does Amelia do to the storybook after it reappears, pieced back together, on her doorstep?

Amelia burns it once its new pages show her killing the family dog, then her son, then herself.

In The Babadook, where does Amelia glimpse what looks like the creature's suit hanging behind the front desk?

A police station is where she runs for help after a disturbing call, but with no proof to offer she leaves the moment she spots the suit.

In The Babadook, what does Sam suffer in the car after a vision of the creature on the way home?

A seizure strikes him on the drive home from the party, and Amelia seeks help and comes away with sedatives for him.

Which hobby of Sam's wins his mother's admiration in the closing scenes of The Babadook?

Magic tricks impress Amelia in the final scenes, a sign of how far the pair have come since his behaviour was causing trouble at school.

What is the first name of Amelia's late husband, whose apparition tempts her in The Babadook?

Oskar is played by Ben Winspear, and the apparition promises to come back to Amelia if she hands over their son.

In The Babadook, what does six-year-old Sam keep building at home because of the monster he fears?

Weapons of his own invention are part of the erratic behaviour that worries his school, but his contraptions later knock out his possessed mother.

Which Australian filmmaker wrote and directed The Babadook as her first feature film?

Jennifer Kent trained and worked as an actress before turning to directing, and went through five drafts of the script.

Which child actor, six years old during filming, plays the troubled Sam in The Babadook?

Noah Wiseman was chosen after the casting director viewed around 500 audition tapes, and the role brought him a Saturn Award nomination.

Which composer, a founding member of the blues-rock duo The Mess Hall, wrote the score for The Babadook?

Jed Kurzel went on to score Macbeth and Alien: Covenant, though this soundtrack itself went unreleased until a 2017 vinyl edition.

Whose voice did The Babadook's composer cut, loop and delay to create the sounds trapped inside Amelia's head?

His daughter's voice, recorded when she was four years old, was chopped into unnerving fragments that grew into fuller pieces of music.

The Babadook's lead actress is also widely known for playing which detective in a television mystery series?

Phryne Fisher, heroine of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, proved popular enough to return in a cinema film, Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears.

In which HBO fantasy series did The Babadook's lead actress later appear as the actress Lady Crane?

Game of Thrones cast her in its sixth season as Lady Crane, herself a stage performer, for a three-episode run in 2016.

At which drama school did The Babadook's director study acting alongside the film's future lead, graduating in 1991?

NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, trained them both, and two decades later the fellow students reunited as director and star.

Which Danish director let The Babadook's future director learn the craft on the set of his film Dogville?

Lars von Trier agreed after she wrote to him asking to assist, and she calls the experience her film school, with stubbornness the key lesson.

Which 2018 revenge drama set in colonial Tasmania was the second feature from The Babadook's director?

The Nightingale premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion and won the Special Jury Prize.

In which Australian state capital was The Babadook filmed, as a condition of its government funding?

Adelaide hosted the shoot because South Australia's state government was paying, with most interiors built on a sound stage in the city.

Which lost 1927 Lon Chaney silent film inspired the look of the creature in The Babadook?

London After Midnight starred Chaney as a sharp-toothed, vampire-like figure, and its last known copy was destroyed in a 1965 studio vault fire.

The director coined the title of The Babadook from babaroga, a word for the bogeyman in which language?

Serbo-Croatian supplied the root, but the finished word is the director's own invention rather than a figure from real folklore.

Which handmade animation technique did the director of The Babadook use to bring the creature to the screen?

Stop-motion suited her wish to keep the effects lo-fi and in camera, and she laughed off criticism of the look because it was always intentional.

In what visual style did the director of The Babadook originally want to shoot the entire film?

Black-and-white appealed for its heightened feel and its echo of theatrical pre-1950s B-grade horror, but she later lost interest in the idea.

At which American film festival did The Babadook have its world premiere in January 2014?

Sundance launched it months before a limited home release on just 13 Australian screens, and invited it back for a tenth-anniversary screening.

Which British critic named The Babadook his favourite film of 2014 and later one of his ten best of the decade?

Mark Kermode put it first on his 2014 list, then eighth among his favourite films of the decade when he looked back in 2018.

Which film tied with The Babadook for the Best Film prize at Australia's AACTA Awards?

The Water Diviner, Crowe's directing debut, tied for the main prize, while the horror film also took Best Direction and Best Original Screenplay.

What has the director of The Babadook said she will never allow to be made from the film?

A sequel is ruled out for good, she has said, because the story is simply not that kind of film.

In The Babadook, what does the increasingly isolated Amelia cut with a knife after the creature attacks her?

The phone line is severed as she turns impatient and violent, shouting at her son and hallucinating that she has murdered him.