The title


I admit I only looked through the first 20 topics mentioned on the message board. But is it possible that the title also alludes to the obvious subject matters of loss, grief, and depression? Specifically, this movie is a sort-of character study about the deterioration of a mother's perception of reality following the father's death. A book appears. A book about the Babadook. And the story goes forward from there. My question is, could the title "The Babadook" be a hint at the "dadabook"? I'm probably reaching because I want to like this movie a little more than I did, but if the title is a simple rearrangement of the "daddy book", then it certainly lends credence to the overarching story of insomnia and loss from the death of the father, and most certainly explains the book itself. Sorry if this has already been expounded, I'm usually late to most parties.

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The filmmaker didn't specifically intend any meaning. You can read into it what you like. That's not a bad interpretation. Yes, that one has been suggested numerous times, but that's okay.

Jennifer Kent, writer/director:

"Some people go "Baba—what? What are you calling your film that for?" But I wanted a name that was crazy and just sounded stupid and kind of made up. Because I was creating a myth of some sort with this film, so it was just an experiment. I wrote the film in Amsterdam—well, part of it in Paris—but I was staying with a Serbian writer, and I asked him, “What’s Serbian for ‘Boogeyman?’” He said “Babaroga,” and I didn’t think that sounded right. But I started playing with “Baba,” and then “Babadook” came up, and then it was just rhyming with everything, and it just felt right. But it’s stupid, it’s just a made-up thing...

"I wanted it to be like something a child could make up, like “jabberwocky” or some other nonsensical name. I wanted to create a new myth that was just solely of this film and didn’t exist anywhere else...

"I really wanted something that felt like we could create our own myth with it. The name didn’t exist in any other context and so people would only associate the name with our story. It didn’t have any previous meaning."


"You must not judge what I know by what I find words for." - Marilynne Robinson

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Babadook = A Bad Book

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