The “Mother of Death”: Horror’s most annoying villain

Horror movies take us right into a world where our deepest fears are laid bare. They illuminate the darker depths of the human psyche – ones we frequently prefer to disregard.

And a few of the most annoying things we are able to imagine seem to not be zombies, aliens or demons, but reasonably those closer to home: moms. Bad.

The “Mother of Death”

Psychologist Carl Jung spent a lifetime studying dreams, myths, fairy tales, and non secular symbols from around the globe, trying to scale back them to what he called “the collective unconscious.” He believed that at the center of the collective unconscious was a set of primordial symbols or archetypes that reflected fundamental elements of the human experience: for instance, the daddy, the hero and the trickster.

Of all these archetypes, Jung considered one to be essentially the most significant: the mother.

The mother symbolizes the origin of our being; Our existence is inextricably linked to theirs. The Latin word for mother, “mater,” is the foundation of the word “matter”.” – the essential substance of our physical world.

Sometimes she is the “Great Mother”: a life-giving, nurturing figure. However, like all archetypes, she also has a dark side: the “terrible mother,” which is characterised by coldness and destructiveness.

Building on Jung's work, Psychoanalyst Marion Woodman presented the concept the “Mother of Death.”.” While the Terrible Mother attacks her child’s spirit and undermines his or her self-confidence, the Death Mother threatens her child’s body and even life.

The mother of death is so frightening, Jungian scientist Daniela Sieff Notes since it makes people Confront yourself with a troubling idea: that “the belief that biology has programmed mothers to love and care for every child they give birth to is a fantasy.” It is relegated to the deepest recesses of the collective unconscious – and horror movies offer certainly one of the few spaces wherein this ultimate taboo could be explored.

As a movie scholarI've noticed that the Death Mother archetype is prevalent in recent horror movies. I consider that, like Woodman and Sieff, she reflects certainly one of the darkest elements of the collective psyche. I also consider that it may possibly be productive to interact with it – that it may possibly be transformed by bringing it into the sunshine.

A mother's shadow

“Hereditary“, released in 2018, begins with the funeral of Annie's domineering mother Ellen, the leader of a satanic cult. In order to summon Paimon, the demon she worshiped, Ellen needed a male host, which she attempted to acquire through her own son – resulting in his suicide, the death of her husband, and Annie's mental illness.

Annie, an artist who makes dollhouses and miniatures, strives to be the very best mother she could be to her two children. Nevertheless, she is consistently thwarted by the pathological influence of her mother's shadow. The family home feels dark and cavernous as each member is isolated in their very own space.

Her grief escalates when Annie's son Peter by accident kills his sister Charlie. As the family's horrors escalate, Annie begins re-enacting traumatic events in a diorama she built of her own residence, underscoring her desperate must construct and control her reality.

It's not enough to maintain her demons at bay. Annie recalls that while she was sleepwalking, she once woke up covered in lighter fluid and about to set herself and her children on fire.

This lack of maternal connection—a violation of essentially the most basic societal expectations—gives the film its deepest foreboding. While a few of the horrors are supernatural in nature, these elements only escalate towards the top. Before that, the horror comes from broken maternal bonds. Annie reveals to her son Peter that she tried to cause him to miscarry. And when her daughter Charlie was born, it was Annie's mother who breastfed the kid: she transferred the spirit of the demon to her and ultimately led to her death.

But at the same time as Annie tries to harm her children, she loves them until she will't anymore – resulting in a few of the film's most annoying scenes.

Nurture revenge

The film 2022 “hatching” is a Finnish horror fairy tale that explores the devastating effects of a mother's conformity to societal norms and the destructive consequences for her daughter. What must be maternal love becomes an unconscious pursuit of power.

The film centers on Tinja, a 12-year-old girl trapped in her mother's tightly controlled world and obsessive about flaunting her family's apparent perfection in her video blog. A former figure skater who never realized her dreams as a consequence of an injury, Tinja's mother is fixated on Tinja's profession as a gymnast, separating her from friends and demanding constant perfection.

In the opening scene, a bird flies through the shimmering lounge window, shattering the glass. Tinja tries to nurse the injured bird back to health, but her mother coldly breaks its neck and instructs Tinja to bury it. In a moment of conflicting emotions, the kid hits the bird, ostensibly to finish its suffering.

She later discovers an egg in a nest and brings it back to her bedroom to hatch. Fed by her tears, a monstrous creature, Alli, emerges from it, believing that Tinja is his mother. Gradually, because the girl cares for the cub, it begins to resemble Tinja, living out her darkest desires – and eventually taking her into himself.

“Hatching” illustrates the core of the Death Mother figure: how mothering and care could be linked to violence and revenge. As Woodman explains, a death mother forces her child to live out his own unfulfilled dreams. while the daughter's own self is erased. Unable to face up to the pressure, the kid projects these repressed feelings onto others, including his own offspring – an expression of the unacceptable feelings he must hide from his mother's scrutiny.

“Be my baby”

At first glance, motherhood seems removed from “Barbarian“, a 2022 film set in a run-down area of ​​Detroit. The story takes place within the only habitable house that’s bought by a gaggle of white financial brothers and rented out as an Airbnb.

Tess, a young filmmaker, shares the apartment with one other tenant as a consequence of a booking error. But she is caught within the basement by a bare-chested female monster – and he’s devoured.

Soon AJ, certainly one of the homeowners, shows up. A Hollywood actor blacklisted by the film industry over allegations of sexual assault, he and Tess battle the monster – known as “the mother” – who now intends to breastfeed them.

Eventually, Tess learns that the home once belonged to a serial killer and rapist who kidnapped women, impregnated them, and has been impregnating their offspring ever since, making the most of the indisputable fact that the police have left the world white flight. The maternal demon within the basement is the one survivor.

After her escape, Tess goes off into the space – to the song “Be My Baby” by the Ronettes.

The violent legacies of patriarchy, misogyny, capitalism and gentrification converge on this house of horrors. The wild figure within the cellar, the Mother of Death, shouldn’t be the true terror. Their viciousness stems from a protracted history of cruelty towards women and the indisputable fact that motherhood is each forced and repressed.

Pressure valve

Actresses Toni Collette, who stars in Hereditary, and Sophia Heikkilä in Hatching have spoken positively about how they bring about their characters to light – and with them the pressures that could make moms “monstrous”.

Collette noted that she developed empathy for her character, miniature artist Annie. was a healthy processone which helped her connect more deeply with herself. Heikkilä recognized elements of the perfectionist vlogger mother in herself and located them a useful cautionary tale.

Their findings suggest that elements of the Death Mother are more widespread than we care to confess, relegating them to the basement of our collective psyche. Horror may help us confront these shadows – and possibly result in catharsis.