PSYCHOLOGY: The Babadook as Depression & It Follows as Trauma

What if the monster in The Babadook is depression, and the thing that follows in It Follows is trauma?

Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual assault (It Follows, about 24:00 to 30:00 and 34:30 to 35:25), suicide (about 17:25), and a mother who becomes a danger to her child (The Babadook). Full spoilers for both films.

Two 2014 horror films, two monsters that stand for something real. The Babadook, Jennifer Kent’s debut out of Sundance, follows a widowed mother whose grief turns into something living in the house. It Follows, David Robert Mitchell’s Cannes breakout, follows a 19-year-old pursued by an entity passed on through sex. We put them side by side and read each monster as a psychological condition.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy talk about complicated grief turning into clinical depression, the ambivalent attachment between Amelia and Sam, why depression feels like being haunted by something no one takes seriously, why depression is managed or in remission rather than cured, and what “it was quiet today” really means. Then It Follows: hypervigilance after sexual assault, telling friends versus carrying it alone, why the entity’s lack of rules makes sense, the teenage brain and consequence, and why the last monster is the hardest to defeat.

Covered in this episode:

• The Babadook (2014), Jennifer Kent and her short film Monster
• Amelia, Sam and the Mister Babadook pop-up book
• Bringing the book inside as letting depression in
• Sleep deprivation and psychotic symptoms
• The monster in the basement, and feeding it worms
• It Follows (2014), David Robert Mitchell, Maika Monroe and Keir Gilchrist
• It Follows as a parable for STIs and the HIV/AIDS crisis
• Why the entity has no rules
• The ending: did they kill it?

Clinical themes: complicated grief, major depression, ambivalent attachment, sleep deprivation and psychosis, remission versus cure, sexual assault and hypervigilance, trauma reenactment, adolescent risk and consequence, mental health stigma.

Related episodes:

• SHRINK CHAT: All Hallows’ Eve, Art the Clown, Baby Jane & Housebound
• PSYCHOLOGY: Mental Illness in Horror, Joker, Hereditary & The Babadook
• SHRINK CHAT: Revenge, Scare Me & Assassins, the Kim Jong-nam Murder

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Two licensed therapists, one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT, take apart the minds behind the crimes.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴
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