Mark Reviews Movies: YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER

You Are Not My Mother, Magnet Releasing

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | March 24, 2022

Writer/director Kate Dolan's debut feature is a case of either the metaphor getting in the way or uncertainty about which part of the story is actually the metaphor. After a disturbing prologue, You Are Not My Mother seems to be addressing mental health issues, how they affect the intimate sphere of a family, and a constant state of fear that something terrible could happen at any given moment. That everyone in the family seems to expect that event doesn't make it any better, and when things do seem to be better, the underlying doubt that the improvement might not be real or permanent hangs like a dark cloud over everything.

That's the movie's surface-level of storytelling, or perhaps, the real surface of this tale has to do with that prologue, which involves magic and folklore, as well as a degree of child endangerment that's absolutely terrifying. Either way, this is a horror movie, and there's little denying that Dolan displays a level of restraint and a sense of gradual escalation. The result is a promising exercise in a persistent and enclosing mood of uncertainty and despair, but there's also neither a genuine sense of nor a sense of sincerity in the story's real purpose.

The prologue involves a baby, alone and crying in a stroller on the street of a neighborhood in Dublin. Outside a nearby house, a couple of women have an unheard argument, and soon enough, one of the women has brought the baby into the woods and, using instructions from a book of spells and rituals, places the child in a circle of twigs. The woman sets fire to the circle, and the pained wailing from the infant certainly sets a specific tone for the story.

More than decade later in the same neighborhood, we meet Char (Hazel Doupe), a teenage girl with a noticeable burn scar on her cheek. She lives in a cozy house with her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) and grandmother Rita (Ingrid Craigie), with an uncle named Aaron (Paul Reid) stopping by every so often. After missing the school bus this particular morning, Char gets a ride from her mother, who hasn't left the house for an unspecified amount of time on account of depression.

The shortened trip to school does show that Dolan cares to some degree about these characters and how the mother's mental health issues have come to define this relationship. There's the way Char attempts to subtly convince and encourage her mother to go shopping after dropping her off at school, and more notably, there's how that quickly turns to frustration, once Angela rejects the idea, and anger, after the mother seems to speed up to hit a horse that's standing in the middle of the road.

Char doesn't want to talk about this with her teacher (played by Jade Jordan), who knows—probably from the rumors in town—that the girl is going through a lot, and her classmates are bullies (One, named Suzanne and played Jordanne Jones, eventually comes to commiserate with her, while another, named Kelly and played by Katie White, is so bent on conflict and violence that she comes across as a sociopath). The poor girl is all alone, and when her mother disappears after dropping Char from school, she's even more so.

The disappearance doesn't last long, and after starting a regimen of prescription medication, Angela's mood seems to improve. Char, though, imagines or starts to see signs that it all might just be a façade.

Dolan builds tension from those doubts, which feels authentic as the movie's intentions remain within the realm of examining Char's learned experience, her relationship with her mother, and the ways in which Angela's condition has created an insular world for the entire family. For a bit, the dread is equally in that Angela's state of mind hasn't truly become better and in the possibility that Char refuses to acknowledge that her mother has improved.

Gradually, though, Dolan reveals that there's something else entirely going on within this story—something that's more in line with the prologue. Char's visions or nightmares of the truth beneath her mother's altered mood are of some unnatural creature. Meanwhile, Dolan begins to hint at some otherworldly force (a scene at the river, which appears to have some supernatural properties) and/or spiritual presence (Suzanne's mother drowned in said river, and a well-edited scene involving dripping water makes the idea of ghosts literal) in the house and within the wider neighborhood, before laying it all out by way of an educational video during a field trip to some ancient site. Inevitably, it all leads to a series of "accidents" or deaths, building toward a fiery climax.

The movie's early concerns and mysteries, revolving around these characters and their relationships within the context of mental health issues, possess a thoughtful but still frightening degree of humanity. By the end of You Are Not My Mother, the story's human element has become a pretense for something far more conventional.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products