Fans are revisiting The Babadook as a campy gay icon, thanks to a strange 2016 internet meme that placed the top-hatted monster in Pride culture. The joke caught fire across Tumblr and beyond, turning a grief-soaked Australian horror film into an unexpectedly enduring piece of queer pop culture.

Essential Takeaways

  • A meme started it: The Babadook was reportedly spotted in Netflix's Pride film collection in 2016.
  • The symbolism clicked: Fans connected his basement home with the idea of being "in the closet".
  • The look helped: A top hat, dark make-up, long nails and dramatic coat gave the monster instant camp appeal.
  • The film remains serious: Beneath the jokes, it's a story about grief, motherhood and emotional repression.
  • The legacy lingers: Babadook costumes and Pride references still appear online and at queer celebrations.

From grief horror to internet punchline

The Babadook is unsettling in a very particular way. He doesn't simply leap from a wardrobe with a roar; he arrives through a sinister children's book, wearing a top hat and an expression that looks permanently unimpressed. That theatrical silhouette made him ideal material for the internet's most inventive kind of joke.

Jennifer Kent's 2014 film follows Amelia, a widowed mother, and her young son Samuel as they confront a creature that keeps returning to their home. As The Guardian explained, the monster works as a metaphor for grief that has been denied rather than processed, which gives the film its emotional weight beneath the scares.

That seriousness is precisely what makes the later meme so funny. The Babadook wasn't designed as a cheerful mascot, yet online audiences gave him a new role: flamboyant, misunderstood and possibly ready to headline a Pride parade.

The Netflix listing that changed everything

The origin story usually traces back to a screenshot showing The Babadook among Netflix's Pride selections in 2016. Nobody seems to have established conclusively whether it was a genuine catalogue error, an edited image or a platform glitch, but certainty wasn't really required. Tumblr users had already found the premise irresistible.

Teen Vogue reported that the image spread quickly, with users building jokes around the monster's supposed queer identity. Once the gag began circulating, the Babadook stopped being merely a horror villain and became an internet character with an entirely new backstory.

It's a classic example of online culture turning an accident, or possibly a joke, into folklore. A misplaced title became a running bit, then a visual language, then a piece of queer meme history.

Why the Babadook's "closet" made sense

The most popular reading centred on the creature's basement home. He is literally kept downstairs, hidden from polite society, which made the phrase "in the closet" an obvious and knowingly ridiculous comparison. The metaphor is hardly subtle, but that was part of its charm.

The Los Angeles Times noted how fans transformed the Babadook through queer-coded readings of the character and his presentation. His dramatic clothes, black make-up, elongated nails and almost vaudevillian manner gave the joke plenty of material. He looks less like a conventional monster and more like a gothic performer who has wandered into the wrong family drama.

There was also something affectionately rebellious about the interpretation. As other coverage, including reporting from Pedestrian, highlighted, fans imagined the Babadook as an outsider disrupting a respectable suburban household. In meme terms, haunting the family home became a radical act.

A camp makeover for a genuinely frightening film

The queer-icon joke doesn't erase what The Babadook is actually about. Amelia's grief after her husband's death shapes her relationship with Samuel, while the creature represents the pain she has tried to suppress. By the end, she hasn't magically defeated sorrow; she's learned to acknowledge and manage it.

That contrast gives the meme its staying power. The film is bleak, tense and often deeply sad, while the online version of the Babadook is a fabulous little menace with excellent accessories. Cinema.nl's discussion of his gay-icon status captures how the character's visual drama helped audiences separate the campy image from the film's heavier themes.

In a way, the reinterpretation also reflects how queer communities have long reclaimed frightening or marginal figures. The Babadook is feared because he doesn't fit neatly into the world around him, then welcomed because that very strangeness becomes his appeal. It's a generous reading of a monster, even if he still needs to work on his manners.

Why the joke still has a pulse

Many internet memes vanish almost as soon as they arrive, but the Babadook's queer reputation has proved unusually durable. Guardian coverage of the phenomenon showed how quickly the joke moved from Tumblr into wider media conversation, while later online references kept the character in circulation through costumes, edits and Pride-themed imagery.

Part of the appeal is its simplicity. You don't need to know every detail of queer history or horror criticism to understand a black-clad creature being declared "one of the gays". But the joke also rewards people who notice the details: the theatrical wardrobe, the hidden basement and the character's refusal to behave like a normal family-film villain.

So, when Halloween rolls around, The Babadook can be enjoyed on two levels. Watch it as an elegant psychological horror film, or watch it as the origin story of an internet diva who found community in the strangest possible place. Either way, keep the lights on.

It's a small, silly queer legacy for a very serious monster.

Source Reference Map

Story idea inspired by: [1]

Sources by paragraph: