YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER is an eerie new entry in the folk horror subgenre that mixes magic and family trauma to chilling effect. It examines the impact of mental illness on a generation of women while telling a compelling Halloween folk tale. Questions of identity, duty, and motherhood swirl in a frightening and affecting film that draws from ancient stories and modern problems alike.
Char (Hazel Doupe) lives in North Dublin with her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) and her grandmother Rita (Ingrid Craigie). Angela suffers from an unnamed mental illness and struggles to leave her dark bedroom. After Char gets her mother to take her to school one morning, Angela’s car is found later that day, abandoned in a field. Char and her uncle Aaron (Paul Reid) search for Angela, but she soon turns up on her own, acting uncharacteristically cheerful and energized. Disturbed by the sudden change in her daughter, Rita warns Char to be careful of her, and together the women must face the secret behind Angela’s troubling “recovery.”
Writer-director Kate Dolan makes an assured feature debut, ably balancing the threads of family dysfunction, generational trauma, mental illness, and Irish folklore. Her chilly vision explores the inversion of parent-child relationships that occur when a parent suffers from mental illness, along with the constant fear that accompanies the good times, owing to the knowledge that the bad times are never far away. Char’s cautious smiles when Angela cooks dinner and dances in the kitchen are heartbreaking, because you can see the questions roiling in her mind: “Can I trust my mom’s mood? How long will it last? And how bad will the inevitable crash be?” Doupe gives a strong performance, conveying every complex emotion with just the slightest change in her face. On top of her family troubles, Char is being bullied at school, and Doupe articulates each intricate layer of fear and rage both inside and outside Char’s home.
The viewer shares Char’s fear, particularly when it comes to her mother. Bracken gives a visceral physical performance. In one standout scene, she becomes enraged when Char refuses to dance with her. She begins a terrifying, manic dance routine — stomping and snarling, pounding the floor with her fists and growling at Char — that suggests that this new version of Angela is something not quite human. Bracken’s physicality is brilliant throughout, as she leans hard into the film’s folkloric horror but keeps the audience guessing with her hot-and-cold demeanor.
The scenes where the viewer sees Angela’s mask slip are the most frightening in the film, but there are plenty of striking visuals beyond that to maintain the eerie tone. At one point, the camera tracks to follow a flock of birds in the sky and then pans down to show Char watching them, suggesting an otherworldly connection at a time when the veil between worlds is thinnest. Later, Char watches a video on a field trip about the use of Samhain bonfires to cleanse and protect; her isolation in the empty room with the projector’s light shining behind her is soon interrupted in a frightening scene of bullying and revenge.
This mixture of heavy subjects never overwhelms the film; rather, it enriches its conversations and characterizations. YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER weaves a complicated tale of mental illness, trauma, familial obligation, female relationships, and identity. Its chilly atmosphere and eerie visuals evoke another world, and its committed performances straddle the line between those worlds. Above all else, Kate Dolan’s film is a compelling work of Irish folk horror and a nuanced look at the complexities of mother-daughter relationships.
Tags: Carolyn Bracken, Changelings, Family Trauma, Folk Horror, folklore, Hazel Doupe, In Theaters, Ingrid Craigie, Kate Dolan, Magnet Releasing, Mental Illness, Paul Reid, Samhain, vod, You Are Not My Mother
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