Horror movies work best when they touch on a primal fear that the audience can relate to, and they are even more frightening when the main character is a mother. Everyone can relate to a mother’s fear of losing their child. In the classics of horror cinema, mothers have lost their children to everything from demonic possession, like Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist, to warped space-time, like Ellen Ripley in Aliens. It is even scarier when the threat is to turn the child against their own mother. 6g3rw

Fans of Hereditary need to check out this other highly-acclaimed horror film before it leaves Netflix. Sitting at an impressive 90% Tomatometer on Rotten Tomatoes, the Ari Aster-directed horror film stars Toni Collette, Gabriel Byrne, Alex Wolff, and Milly Shapiro as a family struggling with a deeply personal loss while also being the target of a secret supernatural conspiracy. Beyond the surface level scares, what makes Hereditary's story so enduring is the way it is used the horror genre as a springboard to explore grief.

Dripping with allegories and hidden themes, there are still many fans who want the ending of The Babadookexplained. The Babadook's touches on darker aspects of motherhood, loss, grief, and how mental illness can create monsters all on its own. However, the movie ends on a confusing but conclusive note for its titular terror and the family he torments. The story sees single mother Amelia struggle with depression just as her son Samuel becomes obsessed with the horrifying movie monster Mister Babadook, who he fears is real and will come for him.

Monsters of all kinds have fascinated humanity for millennia, oftentimes as an explanation for some of the world's most confounding ills and sources of fear. From sabertooth tigers painted on cave walls to modern horror movies, humans have memorialized the nightmarish bogeymen that have imprinted themselves on history. Contemporary pop culture is now marked by the latest interpretations of vampires, aliens, werewolves, and demons, all of which have proven impervious to the march of time.

The Babadook tells the terrifying story of a young boy who becomes convinced that an evil spirit lives in his home, despite his mother’s reassurance that he’s safe. But when his behavior becomes erratic and uncontrollable, his mother realizes something isn’t quite right. The Babadook is an unnerving horror film that delves deep into the human psyche and proves that, sometimes, we can be the scariest monsters of all. The Babadook’s frightening ending has become notorious for its ambiguity and excellent use of horror imagery.

The Babadook writer/director Jennifer Kent talks the movie's 10-year legacy, the horror villain's status as an LGBTQ+ icon, and potential sequel.

While the original movie remains one of the most acclaimed horror titles of the past decade, Jennifer Kent is still not keen on The Babadook 2. The 2014 horror drama served as Kent's feature directorial debut, adapting her short film Monster and following a single mother and her troubled son as they become the target of the titular entity while still grieving the death of the son's father six years earlier. Despite garnering rave reviews from critics and strong international box office returns at the time, no sequel to The Babadook has been produced, with Kent and another producer holding the rights to prevent one.

The Babadookdirector Jennifer Kent has teased her next project, confirming it originates from a horror author who isn't Stephen King. Released in 2014, The Babadook was highly praised for its use of a terrifying creature to represent the depression that can be brought upon by grief. After the film was released, Kent went on to write and direct 2018's The Nightingale, and later wrote and directed the episode "The Murmuring" for Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities. The exact nature of her next project, however, remains up in the air.

The Babadook's director reflects on the main monster's status as an LGBTQ+ icon. The 2014 psychological horror film was written and directed by Jennifer Kent. It starred Essie Davis as a woman named Amelia, a widowed single mother who becomes paranoid when an eerie children's picture book called "Mister Babadook" randomly appears in her home. The Babadook also features a leading cast including Noah Wiseman, Daniel Henshall, and Hayley McElhinney.

One of the most iconic horror movies of the past decade is coming back to theaters with The Babadook's 10th anniversary re-release. The 2014 film served as the feature directorial debut of Australian filmmaker Jennifer Kent, based on her 2005 short film Monster. In the years since, Kent has steadily built a filmography of acclaimed projects, including the 2018 historical psychological thriller The Nightingale and an episode of Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities, which reunited her with Babadook star Essie Davis.