Motherhood on display screen is usually painted as nurturing, selfless, and protecting, however cinema has lengthy explored its darker aspect. Some tales reveal moms who change into abusers, manipulators, and even killers. These portrayals unsettle as a result of they invert one in all society’s most sacred roles, turning the picture of a caregiver into that of a risk. On this quick checklist, we study the on-screen moms whose acts of violence and cruelty depart a chilling mark on audiences.
“Impressed” by the southern gothic horror Sharp Objects and its monstrous child-poisoning mom Adora Crellin, right here’s the quick checklist of visible media that includes related girls. And it’s exceptional simply how quick this checklist is, pointing to an ingrained sexism selling a delusion that each one moms love their youngsters unconditionally and are incapable of something however fiercely defending their brood. These films and tv reveals counsel in any other case.
The Iconic
In so some ways the assorted display screen variations of V.C. Andrews scandalous Flowers within the Attic and its 4 follow-up novels are the quintessential tales about moms who abuse and the cycles of violence that get handed on from era to era. After eloping along with her uncle, Corinne Dollanganger is ostracized from her rich household. Tragedy befalls her and her 4 youngsters, who’re compelled to maneuver into Corinne’s household attic whereas she tries to win again her father’s graces and wealth. When Corinne realizes she will be able to’t, she begins poisoning her youngsters with arsenic to make it appear they by no means existed in any respect.
The 1987 adaptation of Flowers within the Attic sees justice for the youngsters within the eldest daughter Cathy (Kristy Swanson) killing her mom. Lifetime’s model follows the books extra intently, and as an alternative Cathy (Kiernan Shipka) and her surviving siblings escape the attic. However the trauma they survived in that attic by no means actually leaves them. This cult basic dramatizes the nightmare of being locked away in a closet, the place youngsters endure unspeakable acts of abuse by the hands of their grandmother—a twisted stepmother determine. Right here, orphans grapple with betrayal, turning their attic right into a fragile refuge. The merciless punishments inflicted resonate with themes of dysfunctional household, the place abusive childhood outcomes fracture innocence and breed despair.
The Perfectionist
Like Flowers within the Attic, Faye Dunaway’s Mommie Dearest is the basic overbearing, alcoholic, and perfectionist actress mom who takes out her personal profession and different frustrations on her adopted daughter via a sequence of horrific acts.
Cinema typically borrows from actuality. In the identical means that aggressive ice skater Tonya Harding rises via the ranks in opposition to unimaginable odds, abusive household dramas lean on the endurance of survivors. Christina, the adopted daughter of Joan Crawford, immortalized the brutal “no wire hangers” punishments in Mommie Dearest, cementing the story as each cult basic and case research within the impression of a poisonous mom daughter relationship. The movie captured how an abusive childhood ends in lasting scars that psychology nonetheless struggles to unpack.
I, Tonya follows go well with with a mediocre mom LaVona Golden (Allison Janney) whose drive for fame have to be channeled via the true story of a younger girl, her gifted ice skater daughter Tonya Harding (Margot Robbie). LaVona’s abuse rapidly escalates from verbal, to bodily, after which psychological, breaking her daughter to the purpose the place that basis of abuse follows her into new abusive relationships, together with the one which led to Nancy Kerrigan’s knee hit.
Equally, in Peter Haneke’s The Piano Instructor, The Mom’s (Annie Girardot) verbal abuse and profession calls for of her daughter Erika (Isabelle Huppert) are so profound that it bodily manifests in Erika changing into a masochist and sadomasochist, a cutter, paraphiliac, and voyeur. I give this movie an additional content material warning.
The Non secular
Faith drives moms’ cruelty in each Carrie and The Sinner, as these mothers use their non secular beliefs to bodily torture, lock up, and in any other case abuse their daughters. In The Sinner’s case in season one, non secular abuse results in sororal incest, the demise of 1 daughter Phoebe (Nadia Alexander), and the eventual psychological breakdown of the opposite daughter Cora (Jessica Biel) main her to kill. In Carrie, the abuse causes the titular character performed by Sissy Spacek, Angela Bettis, and Chloë Grace Moretz in numerous variations to develop telekinesis and pyrokinesis from the long-term trauma. Carrie White kills dozens when she lastly snaps.
Whereas Darkish Contact doesn’t function overt non secular abuse, it does happen in a small Irish city the place faith is a driving pressure within the social and cultural enviornment. Niamh’s (Missy Keating) complete household, together with her child brother, are discovered useless and she or he claims it was their home that killed them. However when she strikes in with a neighbor, the violence within the partitions continues. The abuse Niamh suffered by the hands of her mom additionally provoked telekinesis from the trauma, and plenty of extra go on to die earlier than anybody realizes the reality.
The Unspeakable
Baby molestation in households by male members occurs nearly too typically on display screen. Moms who sexually abuse their youngsters are far much less frequent, evidenced by the actual fact there are solely two films I might discover the place moms enact this heinous crime on their lady and boy youngsters. There’s additionally bodily abuse endured by the character within the movie.
Within the case of Valuable, Valuable (Gabourey Sidibe) is being bodily (together with meals abuse), verbally, and sexually abused by her mom (Mo’nique). To outlive, Valuable escapes into her vivid creativeness. Set in Harlem, New York Metropolis, Valuable portrays the lifetime of a 16-year-old teenage daughter struggling by the hands of home abuse by an abusive mother or father. Mo’Nique’s character, a single mother or father, embodies pure evil, subjecting her daughter to relentless punishments and baby abuse whereas reinforcing a poisonous mom daughter relationship.
Our “Scream Queen” Jamie Lee Curtis is chilling as a sociopathic mom sexually abusing her boys in Mom’s Boys. It’s significantly grotesque seeing such a beloved actress do these items on the display screen, which makes the casting alternative quite wonderful for max horror results.
The Beater
Excessive bodily and verbal violence drives some monstrous moms, to monstrous outcomes. Kevin Wendell Crumb (James McAvoy) in Break up develops dissociative id dysfunction as a way to defend himself from his mom’s coathanger beatings.
Mickey Knox (Woody Harrelson) in Pure Born Killers fended off his mom’s fists and screaming abuse from the time he was a toddler.
The Fratelli Brothers (Joe Pantoliano, Robert Davi) together with Sloth (John Matuszak) in The Goonies equally cower beneath their mom’s (Anne Ramsay) beatings, at the same time as adults. Sloth is bodily deformed from having been dropped so many instances — and is stored chained up and overwhelmed in a basement.
Within the 2009 Norwegian movie Hidden, bodily violence akin to being dunked with boiling water by his merciless mom leads KK (Kai Kross) to develop a violent alter-ego who terrorizes others.
In every of those circumstances, the long-term impact of bodily violence leads the survivor to a lifetime of crime and homicide.
The Psychopath
What do you do when your mom is an precise psychopath? In White Oleander, Astrid (Alison Lohman) is compelled to name the police on her psychologically abusive mom Ingrid (Michelle Pfeiffer) who additionally occurs to have a penchant for poisoning her lovers when she’s achieved with them. Ingrid goes on to destroy Astrid’s life from a distance, together with driving an adopted mother (Renee Zellweger) to suicide. This movie examines a younger lady navigating foster houses after the sudden demise of her mom and her imprisonment. Michelle Pfeiffer’s character represents the charismatic but abusive mother, her manipulations rivaling the scars left by an ex-husband or unstable aunt Ruth. The protagonist’s journey throughout houses in California seems like a second time wound every placement, forcing her to stability friendship, survival, and psychological sickness in a world of strangers.
In The Grifters, Lilly Dillon (Anjelica Huston) is a textbook psychopath who turns these darkish “items” right into a profitable life as a long-con-woman. Estranged from her son (John Cusack) for years, she gaslights him into becoming a member of her latest plan, all of which ends in lots of deaths — together with her son’s after she tries to seduce him. Yuck.
The Damaged
These depraved moms can curry a little bit of favor from us since they’re within the midst of psychological breaks provoked by excessive trauma and grief. In The Babadook Amelia (Essie Davis) is making an attempt to deal with the sudden lack of her husband, and this trauma manifests in an odd creature terrorizing her precocious son Samuel (Noah Wiseman) specifically. We come to grasp the creature is definitely her, and the movie ends quite fantastically with Amelia confronting and studying to stay along with her inside demon.
Set in a quiet suburban city, The Babadook presents a mom and son trapped in grief and isolation. Following the sudden demise of her mom, Amelia turns into an unintentional abusive mother or father, lashing out at her child whereas battling a monstrous allegory for despair. The plot dives deep into trauma and psychological dysfunction, exploring how abuse can come not solely from violence however from neglect, exhaustion, and untreated ache. It additionally displays how streetwise teen and adults alike carry baggage from previous wounds.
Hereditary’s mother Annie (Toni Collette) is already reeling from the demise of her personal abusive mom when her daughter is killed in a horrible accident brought on by her son Peter (Alex Wolff). As Annie breaks down, so does her relationship along with her son, and her psychotic break places her complete household in danger. Whereas I wasn’t a fan of this movie, it’s a horrifying and wonderful instance of how intergenerational trauma is handed down.
In The Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Siddalee (Sandra Bullock) continues to be making an attempt to heal from the day her mom (Ashley Judd) beat her and her siblings inside inches of their lives throughout a violent bout of postpartum psychosis, after which she merely walked out on her household. But it surely’s extra than simply household issues. This occasion shapes Sidda and her artwork for the remainder of her life, even after she has a tenuous reconciliation along with her mother (additionally performed by Ellen Burstyn).
Within the Mexican cannibal horror Somos Lo Que Hay (We Are What We Are), the mom Patricia finds herself in an sudden emotional breakdown after her husband died of meals poisoning. On the verge of a breakdown of self-destruction for a while because of her husband’s penchant for prostitutes, Patricia takes out her excessive rage on her youngsters in addition to the ladies they kidnap to eat.
The Co-Dependent
Quietly abusive co-dependent moms additionally trigger long-term psychological injury to their youngsters. In Hitchcock’s Psycho and its tv offshoot Bates Motel — the connection between Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins, Freddie Highmore) and his mom (Vera Farmiga) results in Norman’s overidentification together with his mother and a persona cut up that leads him to homicide girls. Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho flips the script by exploring the warped affect of a domineering mom determine. Norman Bates, as soon as a younger boy, turns into consumed by her after-death presence, revealing how unresolved trauma, narcissistic moms and persona dysfunction create horror. His closet of secrets and techniques, hidden corpses, and fractured psyche stand as symbols of how psychological well being collapses beneath abuse. It’s no shock that critics nonetheless analyze the psychology of Norman’s bond together with his mom daughter relationship inversion.
Eddie Kaspbrak’s mom Sonia in each variations of Stephen King’s IT (performed by Sheila Moore in 1990, Molly Atkinson in 2017) additionally show a destructively co-dependent relationship in addition to the Munchausen by Proxy in Sharp Objects that impressed this ugly listicle.
A side-story in Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense involving a mom poisoning her step-daughters to get nearer to her new husband can also be related right here.
The Assassin
The moms in Shutter Island and Atrocious take psychotic breaks to the subsequent stage by murdering their complete households. The mother in Shutter Island Dolores (Michelle Williams) drowns her youngsters when she is unable to deal with postpartum despair. In Atrocious (2010), the mom (Ann Sanz) takes an ax to her complete family, whereas the occasions are being filmed by her youngsters. Additionally, the self-discovery of Grace Stewart (Nicole Kidman) in The Others studying that she smothered her youngsters throughout a bout of post-traumatic psychosis after the demise of her husband. The presentation of occasions in these three movies, whereas completely totally different, pack large and horrifying wallops.