The best horror films can usually be read as parables for larger human truths, for example films like The Exorcist, Carrie, Frankenstein and The Descent, all of which rely on genre conventions to detail the frightfulness of recognizable emotional turmoil. Now we can add Jennifer Kent’s The Babadook to that list. Even though it’s cleverly disguised as a gothic monster movie, the film is essentially one of the most elaborate, insightful looks at depression ever made. It opens with the terrified face of Amelia (Essie Davis) who looks at us from a place of utter dread. We soon realize that she was in the middle of a nightmare she’d had more than once, a memory of the fateful car trip to the hospital in which the excitement of giving birth to her son was replaced by the pain of losing her husband in a tragic accident.

In the years since, her denial has been such, that she refuses to celebrate her son Samuel’s (Noah Wiseman) birthday on the proper date, in fact she still seems to resent him for being born when his father died. To make matters worse, Sam is a trouble kid; he doesn’t let her sleep, he misbehaves in school, and he carries around weapons to protect himself from an imaginary monster. One night he asks Amelia to read him a bedtime story from a mysterious pop-up book called “Mister Babadook”, a creature that once acknowledged haunts the person forever, a creature that then suddenly manifests itself making their existence a living hell.

Without recurring to cheap tricks and facile spooks, director Kent crafts an old fashioned tale in the style of The Innocents, in which she lets the inner lives of the characters create the universe around them. While it’s never specified where the film takes place, one can rest assured that the world would look like a bleak space, wherever in the world Amelia went. She is the one bringing darkness and sorrow to her surroundings. In fact, her eventual acknowledgment of the Babadook seems to be nothing if not a positive step in her road to a recovery she’s desperately needed for years. The question is, will she be able to confront her treatment?

Kent is a smart filmmaker aware that the horrors of withdrawal symptoms can be spookier than any supernatural creature, and instead of focusing on the appearance of the Babadook itself, she concentrates on its effects on Amelia and Samuel. In a truly masterful performance, Davis removes all traces of vanity and allows herself to look ugly inside and out. In the hands of a lesser actress, Amelia would have been easy to tag as a “bad mother” or a “crazy person”, but under Davis’ steady hand, she is nothing if not a troubled human being holding a mirror to our faces and daring us not to recognize ourselves in her. Fear it seems, is ultimately one of the things we undeniably share as humans, so to reveal any of the film’s secrets would be impossible, not because the plot is too complex, but because they will undoubtedly vary from viewer to viewer. Each of us afraid of the unique Babadook hiding under our beds.