Theory about the movie

Yes, the filmmaker made that perspective pretty clear, but she made another one available too. I think the film's depth only becomes accessible when the two perspectives are combined.

It's not necessarily true that "There was no demonic entity living in the house." Arguing for the one perspective exclusively misses the fact that the Babadook's effects are ALSO seen through an objective POV. Take, for example, Sam being dragged up the stairs. That's not from Amelia's POV.

The best psych-horror stories, like this one, trade on the insight that the psyche always wants to project itself onto the world. If your mind is sick, like a sick God you will make the world in that image. Psych-horror exploits the truth that reality is not fixed but takes the form one gives it.

The movie speaks to the primal sense that feelings within us can be so powerful they can develop into an independent entity, an emotional spirit so overwhelming it can burst its psychic bounds and become concrete in the external world, an autonomous force, out of one's control. That can be the flowering of something made of love, or it can be the extrusion of something corrupt and malevolent.

During a terrible fight with your lover, you lose control and "bite his head off." It falls to the floor and rolls to your feet. In that moment you were consumed with hate. Horrified, you come back to your senses, and in the ensuing silence the room vibrates with the violence. As if there is another being present. Not you. In fact, you actually say, "That wasn't me. I didn't mean it."

Who hasn't been "overcome" by a repressed emotion, and after "venting," said "That wasn't me"? Who hasn't needed to leave a room after someone has "lost control" because the emotional violence lingers, a vibrating, real thing?

So to see the Babadook as "only the mother," and "There was no demonic entity" external to her excludes half the story's potential meaning and pleasure.

Some stories, like the best psych-horror, ask that we let go of the rules governing and restricting ordinary perception, and open ourselves to potentially broaden our way of experiencing the world. We are asked to set aside our usual way of comprehending everyday reality. "There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in our philosophy."

It's a porous border between the world of the psyche and the external world. We re-create reality moment-by-moment. The inner monster exerts a very real influence on the external world. In Jennifer Kent's own words:

"She has made a career out of suppressing the darkness and difficulties and stressing them so much that they were gaining so much energy that it was starting to control her. You can consider it the shadow side or a supernatural force, or however you want to read it. It can work both ways... What would happen if you pushed down on some grief or difficult feeling for so long and with so much strength that it developed an energy and split off from you?"

Yes, I believe it was definitely the mother! There is even a part in the beginning of the film, where she's at the birthday party for her niece and tells the other mothers that she used to be a children's book author. It was said in passing and the dialogue quickly digressed to something else. There was no need for the filmmaker to throw in that fact, except to connect her with the child's book that mysteriously appeared in her house, in her child's room on his bookshelf. She's the only one who had access to the house. Psychologically, there was so much going on with her; she was depressed, overwhelmed, overworked, suffering insomnia, post traumatic stress, grief, and lingering resentment towards her son over the death of her husband. She was a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown and she was completely isolated from her sister, she had no support system. Even if the Babadook was an actual monster, an entity completely separate from the mother, it doesn't negate all of the aforementioned problems she was struggling to cope with. It makes more sense, in a logical, realistic sense, that she went off the deep end. She was unraveling immediately on screen and continued a descent into madness throughout the duration of the film.

To me, that's also much scarier than a monster or a demon. Things that are plausible, horrors that can truly happen to people, to you, are far more frightening. We all know that the boogeyman isn't real. But people losing it and going crazy... well that is real. If you're a child, is anything scarier than having a mom who you you can longer trust to keep you safe and alive?

What invisible force pulled the boy upstairs and repeatedly into the wall? What could he see in the car before convulsing? Im sorry but this wasnt solely the mother, your theory would make too many scene's unexplainable. It attacked her and her son because she was vulnerable. It didnt expect her to fight back the way she eventually did and accept her tragic reality and realise how much she truly loved her son, when she did it submitted to the basement, waiting.

yes.

I like your theory,

Anyhow,my theory is that "The Babadook" is mental illness, i personally think it would be either bipolar disorder or phsycotic breaks.

1.The Mom is obviusly clinically depressed, her husband died while she was giving birth to their son. The child is also depressed, but i think he haves other issues besides that one, i think he haves AD/HD.

2. At first we get to see that mom tries to treat her son like every other child, she thinks he is just "weird", she tries her best to tolerate and love him, but her mental state just won't allow it. As the movie progresses we see that Mom finally accepts that her son is different (The scene with the doctor) and this acknowledgment takes her on another pitch of stress since how is she goin to be able to treat her child, she just can't hold everything herself.

3. The fact that her sister just won't stand her anymore, plus the insomniac is the last stroke, after that she HERSELF begins to see and hear the babadook.

it starts quietly but the babadook begins to take hold, and then it is just impossible to ignore.

4.Through the film we get to see:
a) Denial of the existence of the babadook
b)acknowledgment of it.
c)confronting the babadook
d)Learning to live with the Babadook

and then at the end, where it is not gone but "controlled", i think that particular scene represents how mental instability or mental illness is never gone, it's something you have to learn how to live with.

Plus, extra props for one of the best written kids in modern cinema. i found that kids are often in movies as mere accesories or justifications, but this kind is an actual character with motivations and personal growth. Not many modern films have been able to pull that off (only "Room" comes to mind).