The Babadook is the scariest film I’ve ever seen.

What a really real nauseating terror. We are forced to feel is about a tragic life. Real tragedy and bleakness after your husband dies right before you give birth. The pain is so great—and the being alone and past the hotness date—is terrible. What is looked forward to, when young? What is the fantasy future? Love. Love with partner. Love with partner and child. Happy home. Love. Belonging. Purpose.

And yes, we make our own purpose, but there really is an infra-purpose.

That was taken for her. And now real horror—of really preferring suicide—comes to life. It comes to life the way Lord Byron talked about in Gothic (1986), which happens to be my “favorite film of all time,” most of the time. Bring your deepest fears to life.

But she’s not doing it with artist’s love of irony and power of ontic distancing. She is living it; or rather, her life is living and she identifies with it as beloved and mine. The “earnestness of substantial life” that Rick Roderick holds up against the postmodern claim that it’s all only signifiers. No, working, eating, sleeping, love, affection, trust, care—these are chemo-real bricks and mortar. They have real material conditions. Things have to actually happen in physical reality.

That is the only place pain and fear are real. We wish we could have a Tolkein or Blakean world next door to gripe about. No. Failure here cuts deep—to actual death. That knife is real, and the only truly scary one.

So this film shows that deepest grief leads to deepest malice. The balm of pain is sometimes evil.

She wants to kill her son.

She twitches like an evil insect.

She actually kills her dog!

The face of fear: London After Midnight as archetype

Another factor is the look of fear.

Being a kid, what is evil? It is the adult who takes pleasure and laughs as he punches you, slaps you, kicks you, bites your eyes and face while grinning. That face of gleeful evil—that is scary. It is Dad, the wise worldly man of power and seeing-through. That is his essence, but he uses his wisdom as a power to dominate you and your fear brings him joy.

What could be worse than that, eh? A person who likes hurting you. That’s bad, because if he likes it it’s going to keep happening.

You calculate instantly that either you or he must die or kill. Both are horrible. Killing is like dying because if you try, you might—because your target is going to turn on you and aim to kill you. Wanting to kill makes your killer.

If I were a kid, I would hate to have to fist fight or run from Babadook. He is a goth London After Midnight demon, or Angry Father.