ADELAIDE, Australia — Iconic movie monster the Babadook was recently seen chain-smoking in a Hungry Jack’s parking lot after learning it was a metaphor for “grief” and not “manic sexy trillionaire awesomeness” like it had hoped, entertainment sources reported.
“I’ve got badass claws, a cool top hat and scuttle around ceilings like a weird bug, and apparently, somehow that means ‘grief,’” said the Babadook. “My calling card is a spooky pop-up book and I wear old-timey clothes, so I assumed I was the ghost of a big-dick publishing magnate from the 1850s. But no, I guess I represent trauma, which just doesn’t feel right. I eat gross worms. When I want to scare someone I fly around and yell my name over and over in a creepy low voice. Why would a monster as fun and cool as I am represent something so depressing? I repeat; I’m wearing a top hat!”
Director and screenwriter Jennifer Kent said that despite the film’s 2014 release, she only recently told the Babadook what it represented.
“He was just having so much fun, being a gay icon and all that, and I didn’t want to ruin it,” Kent said. “We’d be on set filming and it would say stuff like ‘wow, it’s so great that you wrote a movie about a monster who likes to party and can afford cool clothes.’ I mean, frankly, I just couldn’t bear to say ‘actually, you are a metaphor for how the single-mother protagonist’s trauma manifests as an unspoken resentment towards her son.’ But I had to rip off the band-aid, it’s been a decade after all. Now I’m paying for it and the Babadook won’t return any of my calls.”
The Thing from the eponymous 1982 John Carpenter flick has experienced this kind of disappointment before.
“Babadook called me sounding pretty upset, and I said ‘dude, I’ve been there.’ It took me until 1989 to realize I represented how easily rational people can turn on each other,” reported The Thing. “It’s hard; one moment you’re a guy whose stomach turns into a big mouth, only to be the subject of an overwritten college film studies essay the next. It’s not fun to hear, but, like I tell my husband, Tobey, you can’t let your screenwriter’s themes define you. I can still grow eyestalks and crab legs out of a guy’s head, or combine a bunch of dogs into a bloody pile of writhing flesh whenever I want, and that makes me happy.”
At press tiem, The Thing and The Babadook have launched a self-help podcast for “kick-ass movie monsters who are more than their metaphors.”