The Babadook
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40 free The Babadook trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Babadook arrived in 2014 as a small Australian horror film about a widowed mother, her anxious six-year-old son and a storybook that will not stay thrown away. It found a modest audience at home, a far bigger one overseas, and a reputation as one of the most admired horror films of its decade. It has since picked up a second life online that nobody involved saw coming. This quiz covers the film from every side. There are questions on the story: what the creature looks like, what happens to Amelia and Sam, and how it all ends. Others cover the people who made it, from the first-time director and her lead actress to the composer, and the handmade methods used to put the creature on screen. The rest follow the film out into the world: its festival debut, its awards, its famous admirers and the internet joke that gave it an unlikely afterlife. It is pitched for horror fans, film-night groups and anyone who has watched the film once and wants to see how much stuck. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you will leave knowing a little more about how the film was made.
30 of 40 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In The Babadook, what kind of bedtime reading, titled Mister Babadook, introduces the creature to Amelia and Sam?
A pop-up book
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.
Q 02In The Babadook, which item of headwear does the creature in the storybook wear with his suit?
A top hat
A top hat and suit make up his look in the story, where he grows more sinister and menacing with each page turned.
Q 03Critics widely read the creature in The Babadook as a metaphor for which emotion that Amelia has tried to bury?
Grief
Grief is the real monster, as one reviewer put it, and the film suggests that suppressing it only makes it stronger.
Q 04At the end of The Babadook, what do Amelia and Sam gather in the garden to feed the creature?
Worms
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.
Q 05Which long-running animated series spoofed The Babadook as The Pookadook in a 2022 Halloween special?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons had Marge read Maggie the sinister bedtime story, with the spirit feeding on her resentment at being taken for granted.
Q 06Which streaming service appeared, in a viral 2016 screenshot, to list The Babadook among its LGBT films?
Netflix
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.
Q 07Which director of The Exorcist said in 2014 that he had never seen a more terrifying film than The Babadook?
William Friedkin
William Friedkin went further in the same burst of praise, ranking the newcomer alongside Psycho, Alien and Diabolique.
Q 08Which Australian actress plays Amelia, the exhausted widow and single mother at the centre of The Babadook?
Essie Davis
Essie Davis earned Best Actress nominations from the Saturn Awards and the Online Film Critics Society for the role.
Q 09To protect its six-year-old star, who did The Babadook's lead actress really shout at in the abusive scenes?
An adult stand-in
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.
Q 10Which crowdfunding site did the makers of The Babadook use to raise 30,000 US dollars for building its sets?
Kickstarter
Kickstarter backers, 259 of them, edged the campaign just past its target, closing a gap in the money for design and special effects.
Q 11In The Babadook, how did Amelia's husband die on the day their son Sam was born?
In a car crash
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.
Q 12In which part of the house does Amelia finally lock away the creature at the end of The Babadook?
The basement
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.
Q 13What is the name of the family dog that the possessed Amelia kills in The Babadook?
Bugsy
Bugsy was played by a dog named Hachi, who is credited in the cast list alongside the human actors.
Q 21In The Babadook, what does six-year-old Sam keep building at home because of the monster he fears?
Weapons
Weapons of his own invention are part of the erratic behaviour that worries his school, but his contraptions later knock out his possessed mother.
Q 22Which Australian filmmaker wrote and directed The Babadook as her first feature film?
Jennifer Kent
Jennifer Kent trained and worked as an actress before turning to directing, and went through five drafts of the script.
Q 23Which child actor, six years old during filming, plays the troubled Sam in The Babadook?
Noah Wiseman
Noah Wiseman was chosen after the casting director viewed around 500 audition tapes, and the role brought him a Saturn Award nomination.
Q 14In The Babadook, what does Amelia find in her food and at first blame on Sam?
Shards of glass
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.
Q 15In The Babadook, from where does Sam push his cousin Ruby after she bullies him at a birthday party?
A tree house
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.
Q 16In The Babadook, what does Amelia do to the storybook after it reappears, pieced back together, on her doorstep?
Burns it
Amelia burns it once its new pages show her killing the family dog, then her son, then herself.
Q 17In The Babadook, where does Amelia glimpse what looks like the creature's suit hanging behind the front desk?
A police station
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.
Q 18In The Babadook, what does Sam suffer in the car after a vision of the creature on the way home?
A seizure
A seizure strikes him on the drive home from the party, and Amelia seeks help and comes away with sedatives for him.
Q 19Which hobby of Sam's wins his mother's admiration in the closing scenes of The Babadook?
Magic tricks
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.
Q 20What is the first name of Amelia's late husband, whose apparition tempts her in The Babadook?
Oskar
Oskar is played by Ben Winspear, and the apparition promises to come back to Amelia if she hands over their son.
Q 24Which composer, a founding member of the blues-rock duo The Mess Hall, wrote the score for The Babadook?
Jed Kurzel
Jed Kurzel went on to score Macbeth and Alien: Covenant, though this soundtrack itself went unreleased until a 2017 vinyl edition.
Q 25Whose voice did The Babadook's composer cut, loop and delay to create the sounds trapped inside Amelia's head?
His daughter's
His daughter's voice, recorded when she was four years old, was chopped into unnerving fragments that grew into fuller pieces of music.
Q 26The Babadook's lead actress is also widely known for playing which detective in a television mystery series?
Phryne Fisher
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.
Q 27In which HBO fantasy series did The Babadook's lead actress later appear as the actress Lady Crane?
Game of Thrones
Game of Thrones cast her in its sixth season as Lady Crane, herself a stage performer, for a three-episode run in 2016.
Q 28At which drama school did The Babadook's director study acting alongside the film's future lead, graduating in 1991?
NIDA
NIDA, the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, trained them both, and two decades later the fellow students reunited as director and star.
Q 29Which Danish director let The Babadook's future director learn the craft on the set of his film Dogville?
Lars von Trier
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.
Q 30Which 2018 revenge drama set in colonial Tasmania was the second feature from The Babadook's director?
The Nightingale
The Nightingale premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where it competed for the Golden Lion and won the Special Jury Prize.