Horror has a habit of rehashing the mother-haunted-child relationship. When, however, the genre breaks rank and explores the raw realities of postnatal depression — like Mom, where the lives of Meredith and Jared fall apart after the arrival of their newborn — we’re witnesses to something even more terrifying.
Perhaps Mom’s most striking trait is how Emily Hampshire, as Meredith, doesn’t hold back from portraying motherhood as an unending nightmare. The relentless white noise of her crying baby implores us to understand the world from the perspective of a mother in suffering. Moments of intimacy like breastfeeding are transformed into body horror. And while Mom doesn’t go to New Extremity levels to capture a parent’s grief like Inside (the 2007 French original, of course), it does a wonderful job of being uncompromising with disturbing subtlety.
Mom is also masterful in never letting us guess what is real or illusion. Every shot is smudged with a misty, dreamlike haze. Sounds, objects and memories duplicate and overlap, much like Jacob’s Ladder or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, forcing the past and present to amalgamate. Meanwhile, the home itself feels like a palatial maze of boundless rooms, floors and spaces, yet simultaneously a cage that Meredith can’t escape. Together, these elements unbalance the audience, creating a distrust of the narrative, its characters and the universe in which they exist (if at all), roam and rattle.
The disembodiment director Adam O’Brien conjures within the singular space of the family home is brilliant, yet his examination of cyclical timelines — where the living and dead, as well as the past and present, spiral — isn’t treated with the analysis it deserves. This oversight undeniably dulls the shine of Mom’s gut-punch crescendo, but it still doesn’t subtract from what the picture accomplishes.
While Hereditary and David Lowey’s Ghost Story might still hold the gold standard in their anatomisation of bereavement, Mom is unmatched in its exploration of postnatal depression. Hampshire isn’t just captivating: even more remarkably, she’s sympathetic. There are no monsters in this powerful piece of horror, just guilt and grief, and the way both can haunt us like ghosts.
DISTRIBUTOR
Blue Finch Film Releasing
DIGITAL
17 February 2025
DIRECTOR
Adam O’Brien
SCREENPLAY
Adam O’Brien
Albert I Melamed
Philip Kalin-Hajdu
CAST
Emily Hampshire
Christian Convery
François Arnaud
