Essie Davis on The Babadook: people made masks of me for Halloween

http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/04/essie-davis-on-the-babadook-success

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When fans sported Halloween masks of her face, Essie Davis knew her film The Babadook had reached cult status.

Speaking on the red carpet at the Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts awards, Davis said she was “incredibly proud” of the psychological horror, which shared best film honours with Russell Crowe’s directorial debut, The Water Diviner.

It also picked up best writer and best director awards for creator Jennifer Kent.

Related: The Babadook review – a superbly acted, chilling Freudian thriller | Peter Bradshaw

“I think it’s something that’s deeper and more wonderful than a horror movie,” Davis said of the film, in which she plays a widowed mother whose only child is haunted by visions of a monster from a bedtime story.

The Babadook’s success shows that a tight budget doesn’t have to limit a film’s potential audience, she added. “It was made for nothing except love and blood and guts and sweat and tears.”

Shot in Adelaide, the film was funded by Screen Australia, South Australian Film Corporation and a $30,000 Kickstarter campaign, and although its domestic box office was minimal – taking just $258,000 from 13 screens – it has enjoyed strong international success in the UK, USA and continental Europe.

The 12-week shoot was exhausting, said Davis, who revealed she lost her voice for three days after filming her character’s 11-second long scream. “It didn’t matter if I looked like shit and felt like shit every day, because that’s what it needed.”

Davis remarked drily that as a mother of twins, it wasn’t “that big” a transformation for her. “It was just about being brave enough to show everyone.”

Although she appreciates the indignation of film fans and critics on The Babadook’s behalf over its supposed Oscars snub, Davis is resigned to the situation.

“I wished that we had been able to release it in a way that we could have actually been a contender, but it was released on video-on-demand on the same day it was released in the cinema and that’s a rule breaker,” she clarified. “So we didn’t qualify for any of those big awards, but we have a massively growing audience.”

Comments from horror legends including Stephen King, who called it “deeply disturbing and highly recommended”, and The Exorcist director William Friedkin, who called it “the scariest film” he’d ever seen, have helped to cement the film’s following.

Related: The Babadook's monster UK box office success highlights problems at home

But additional funding might have helped to further the film’s success, Davis said. “It’s also about money and marketing and campaigning and we have no money,” she said, adding with a laugh. “We don’t even have a publicist tonight to set up interviews.”

Davis went straight from shooting The Babadook into playing Phryne Fisher, the sassy heroine of ABC TV drama, Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries.

She puts the show’s ongoing popularity down to its “dynamic” main character. “Who wouldn’t want to be like her? She’s got skills, intelligence, wit – and she’s naughty. She is always fighting for the underdog and fighting for women’s rights and against the church ... it’s truly escapist fun [but] that actually deals with the realities of 1928 and 1929, which are still realities today.”

Miss Fisher also has style, said Davis, adding that many viewers tuned in for her clothes and car alone. “I appreciated [playing] Phryne that I don’t have to go to the gory depths, but then I went to depths with The Badabook.”

The third season of the ABC drama will air later in 2015.