10 Confusing Horror Movies You Need To Watch Twice To Understand

Many of the greatest horror films – such as 28 Days Later, The Exorcist, The Shining, and Pan’s Labyrinth – bury deeply relevant and universal subject matter beneath their blatant scares. On the surface, they focus on ominous entities, but they always pack extra subtext, too.

Jennifer Kent’s directorial debut, The Babadook, is another superb example of this. Ostensibly, it’s about a widowed mother, Amelia, trying to cope with her unstable son, Sam, following the death of her husband, Oskar. Before long, she’s terrorized by the namesake being – a pop-up storybook life form that could’ve been plucked from the mind of James Wan – as she becomes increasingly irritable and neglectful.

Eventually, the creature taunts Amelia with glimpses of Oskar before possessing her; from there, she chases Sam around the house with murderous intent, but is met with compassion when her son embraces her, giving her the power to imprison her tormentor in the basement and feed it when necessary.

As a superficially threatening monster, the Babadook is certainly frightening, but its weightier role as the metaphorical manifestation of Amelia’s debilitating anguish and resentment – which she finally learns to manage in a healthy way – makes return encounters far clearer and more beautiful.