The Succession star is typically excellent but even her performance feels too familiar in this derivative ‘mummy horror’ flick
Motherhood is mayhem. Just ask any woebegone mama of film history: Mia Farrow’s wide-eyed Rosemary Woodhouse, beset with paranoia; Margaret White, the religious zealot of Carrie who mistakes punishment for protection; the bloodthirsty Pamela Voorhees; the abusive Norma Bates.
Nowhere, though, is home to more mummy issues than Australia, a country that has hosted some of recent cinema’s stickiest forays into miserable mothers. See: The Babadook’s young widow defending her precocious son against a spindly storybook beast. Or 2020’s Relic, where three generations of women confront their relationships with one another while also confronting some sort of annoying demon disrupting their family reunion. Or, of course, Toni Collette’s longsuffering matriarch in Hereditary, her instantly famous diatribe – “I AM YOUR MOTHER!” – sending shockwaves through every mealy mouthed mama’s boy. If cinema can telegraph national identity, then Australia needs to go to therapy immediately.
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