Mommie Dearest: The changing face of maternal… | Little White Lies

Women In Film

Mom­mie Dear­est: The chang­ing face of mater­nal hor­ror cinema

14 Jun 2018

Words by Leila Latif

A woman with long hair screaming in fear, her mouth wide open and eyes tightly shut.
A woman with long hair screaming in fear, her mouth wide open and eyes tightly shut.
A Qui­et Place and Hered­i­tary are the lat­est films to chal­lenge ide­alised notions of motherhood.

One thing that dis­tin­guish­es hor­ror from any oth­er film genre is how much it loves its tropes: repeat­ing them, play­ing trib­ute to them or satiris­ing them which can lead to a self ref­er­en­tial loop where it is dif­fi­cult to deci­pher what is good, bad or iron­ic. This is espe­cial­ly true of female roles in hor­ror films and in par­tic­u­lar moth­ers. Be they bad guys, puri­tans, ter­ri­fy­ing sub­ur­ban, com­plete­ly neg­li­gent, sadis­tic, absen­tee, recent­ly deceased, or over­bear­ing, their motives are straight­for­ward and their char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion is often shallow.

Moth­ers in hor­ror films tend to fall into two camps, the most preva­lent being the evil shrew who through her abu­sive par­ent­ing cre­ates the evil antag­o­nist (Psy­cho, Brain­dead, Car­rie, The Brood, Fri­day the 13th). This is nor­mal­ly accom­pa­nied by strong oedi­pal under­tones. The sec­ond is the scream­ing vic­tim who is obliv­i­ous to what is going on and suf­fers intense­ly while being large­ly inca­pable of sav­ing her­self (The Shin­ing, The Exor­cist, Rosemary’s BabyThe Omen). The Shin­ing is prob­a­bly the most egre­gious exam­ple of this, Wendy Torrance’s appar­ent obliv­i­ous­ness to her sit­u­a­tion and inabil­i­ty to pro­tect her­self or her child is a dis­heart­en­ing por­tray­al. As Stephen King once put it, She is one of the most misog­y­nis­tic char­ac­ters ever put on film. She’s basi­cal­ly just there to scream and be stupid.”

The slash­er genre took this a step fur­ther with the preva­lence of absent moth­ers. A mother’s absence looms large in A Night­mare on Elm Street, Hal­loween and Scream, both in the life of the pro­tag­o­nist and when – plot twist – it turns out that the gory events were set up by the mother’s actions in the first place. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly evi­dent in the Scream series, with fre­quent lengthy mono­logues in which one of the many antag­o­nists reminds Neve Campbell’s Sid­ney Prescott that this is all hap­pen­ing because her moth­er was a whore.

Released in 2014The Babadook con­tains an unflinch­ing por­tray­al of moth­er­hood. Pow­ered by Essie Davis’ sen­si­tive, at times intense lead per­for­mance, Jen­nifer Kent’s direc­to­r­i­al debut is far more psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly affect­ing than it is down right ter­ri­fy­ing. The film tells the sto­ry of a depressed wid­owed moth­er of a trou­bled son who is bare­ly able to con­ceal her resent­ment of the child she loves dear­ly. There’s no short­age of hor­ror in which the mon­ster turns out to be a man­i­fes­ta­tions of the sins of the pro­tag­o­nist. But Kent dis­rupts the rules of moth­er­hood in hor­ror – Amelia is not the vil­lain and nor does she play the part of pas­sive vic­tim. The Babadook beau­ti­ful­ly artic­u­lates the fury that often accom­pa­nies mater­nal sacrifice.

Since then there have been a num­ber of sim­i­lar­ly fas­ci­nat­ing depic­tions of moth­er­hood in genre cin­e­ma. Alice Lowe’s Pre­venge cen­tres around a heav­i­ly preg­nant woman (played by Lowe her­self, who was preg­nant at the time of film­ing) who is com­pelled to com­mit mur­der by her homi­ci­dal unborn child while being infu­ri­at­ing­ly patro­n­ised the way preg­nant women so often are. Nicole Kidman’s Anna Mur­phy in The Killing of the Sacred Deer is proac­tive and lov­ing towards her tragedy-struck chil­dren but draws a firm line in the lim­its of self-sacrifice.

The recent XX hor­ror anthol­o­gy film com­pris­es four dif­fer­ent short films direct­ed by and star­ring women, three of which focus on moth­er­hood and the unique hor­rors that it leaves one vul­ner­a­ble to. Each of the shorts uses hor­ror as a way to explore a mother’s worst fears: What if my child is diag­nosed with an incur­able dis­ease? How can I keep them shel­tered from the ugli­ness of the world around them? What if they grow up to be a ter­ri­ble per­son? That these films are able to put a fresh per­spec­tive on mater­nal fears while deliv­er­ing excit­ing, sub­ver­sive cin­e­ma is evi­dence of a genre in rude health.

Ear­li­er this year A Qui­et Place offered a dif­fer­ent take on the suf­fer­ing moth­er. Emi­ly Blunt’s Eve­lyn Abbott is a heav­i­ly preg­nant woman nav­i­gat­ing a post-apoc­a­lyp­tic world in which she is forced to defend her fam­i­ly. She must lit­er­al­ly suf­fer in silence or risk being devoured by invis­i­ble mon­sters. The film tor­tures Eve­lyn far more than any oth­er char­ac­ter: she is stalked relent­less­ly, near­ly drowned, has a nail dri­ven through her foot and is sub­ject­ed to a clas­sic hor­ror movie birth. How­ev­er, unlike a Wendy Tor­rance or Rose­mary Wood­house, she is not a meek vic­tim. She is able to heal the rifts in her fam­i­ly, deliv­er her own baby with­out assis­tance, mourn the loss­es she suf­fers with­out ever being paral­ysed by them, and in the end she is tri­umphant­ly (and sin­gle­hand­ed­ly) saves her chil­dren. This is a woman with­out weak­ness, bit­ter­ness or rage.

In the case of Hered­i­tary, it is the evil shrew arche­type that is inge­nious­ly reimag­ined. The first fea­ture from writer/​director Ari Aster, whose ear­li­er shorts Mun­chausen and The Strange Thing About The John­sons also explore the dark­er side of fam­i­ly, Hered­i­tary tells the sto­ry of the Gra­ham fam­i­ly with Toni Col­lette giv­ing one of the most com­mit­ted per­for­mances in mod­ern hor­ror cin­e­ma in the role of the matri­arch. Collette’s Annie is a rich, trag­ic and com­plex char­ac­ter who has more in com­mon with Medea and Hed­da Gabler than Pamela Voorhees or Mar­garet White.

Hered­i­tary will leave your soul writhing in pain. It is a film about the dam­age we do to our chil­dren, about the ways small sins chip away at our rela­tion­ships until there is noth­ing left, about all the ways that fam­i­lies can destroy each oth­er and how being a moth­er sets you up to fail again and again. Unlike in the prob­lem­at­ic and clichéd car­i­ca­tures of old, Annie Gra­ham is a ful­ly three-dimen­sion­al human being. She is both the vic­tim of her abu­sive moth­er and the vil­lain for fail­ing her fam­i­ly at every turn. Many of the most hor­ri­fy­ing moments in the film stem from the hideous things an unrav­el­ling Annie says to her off­spring. In one stand­out scene she unloads on her griev­ing fam­i­ly over din­ner, scream­ing accu­sa­tions at them before com­plain­ing that their shared pain hasn’t brought them all clos­er togeth­er. She is at once unhinged, apa­thet­ic and vicious. This is moth­er­hood at its very worst with­out ever descend­ing into caricature.

Scenes unfold at an unnerv­ing slow pace, forc­ing us to sit with these char­ac­ters and absorb their pain. We see them – espe­cial­ly Annie – make wrong deci­sion after wrong deci­sion, which inevitably leads to increas­ing­ly dire con­se­quences. Though she may have been doomed to fail from the start, it’s still shock­ing to see how much Annie lacks the basic strength and kind­ness to help her fam­i­ly. It is her per­son­al tragedy that she is forced to watch her loved ones suf­fer because of her actions, and cru­cial­ly Collette’s mas­ter­ful per­for­mance leaves us sym­pa­thet­ic to Annie even as we wit­ness the hav­oc she wreaks.

Hered­i­tary is fur­ther proof that hor­ror cin­e­ma doesn’t need to rely on nar­row def­i­n­i­tions of moth­er­hood (or indeed wom­an­hood) to have mass appeal. After all, moth­er­hood is a peri­od of self-exam­i­na­tion, of ques­tion­ing one’s strengths and weak­ness­es, and becom­ing acute­ly aware of the dark­ness in the world. It is a time in a woman’s life when she is forced to relin­quish con­trol of her body, yet it can also be empow­er­ing, and as Aster’s film shows this trans­for­ma­tion can be the foun­da­tion for the high­est cal­i­bre of horror.

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