The movie opens with an eerie scene of a naked man drowning himself in the marsh. For what reason, and who he was, we have absolutely no idea…at least not yet. Then we head over to our protagonist, Laura. She’s a woman troubled with trauma and who is trying to handle this in the worst ways possible of course: by drugging the pain away. Yup, that’s always such a splendid solution and never make things ten times worse! While she’s overdosing in her own bathroom, something inexplicable happens causing her to survive. With most of her life having already gone to shit, including her job and what was originally a good relationship with her boss, she decides to confront her childhood demons once and for all. Laura packs up and leaves to return to her childhood home in a village where everyone seems to keep a resentment towards her for having left the place. Well, they can all go fuck themselves, who cares what they think. But Laura soon finds herself in a position where it’s not only the broken relationship with her mother that’s the only problem…and why does it look like her mother has barely aged at all since she left all those years ago?
Matriarch is a folk horror film from 2022, written and directed by Ben Steiner. It was released on Hulu and Disney+. While we’ve had more than our fair share of trauma-centered movies in the horror genre during the last two decades or so, many of them try to depict the protagonist in as much of a sympathy-inducing manner as possible. In this movie, however, our protagonist Laura comes off as such a miserable and messy character, with a demeanor that’s hard to fully sympathize with. Yes, she had a bad childhood and all kudos to her for escaping the hellhole she came from and starting a new life…but instead of at least trying to get her act together, she’s self-sabotaging in the worst ways possible, while antagonizing every kind person around her who’s actually trying to help. She’s a maladaptive mess. And then we get to meet the mother, or the matriarch if you will, and while you kind of get why Laura has become such a fuck-up to begin with they ultimately both end up being unlikable characters, despite obviously rooting for Laura in all of this as she’s the obvious victim here. But victims can sometimes be assholes too. There’s no mystery regarding the mother though, it’s apparent from the get-go that she’s an evil bitch who starts drugging her daughter already on the first night for some purpose we get to know much later in the movie.
The town itself appears like the type of forgotten village where all the young people are long gone to better and more populated places, while the only remaining ones are the binge-drinking types that keeps the only local pub well alive while all the rest goes to shit. And while that comparison may not be all that far from the truth, it becomes obvious early on that it’s not just Laura’s mother who is plotting something sinister, everyone in the little town appears to be keeping some kind of dark secret. While the story here is very much a slow burner with more focus on family drama at first, there’s always an underlying tone of something brooding, some supernatural mystery that gets slowly revealed. The atmosphere is pretty decent, and helps elevate the movie.
While not great, I think that Matriarch is a pretty decent folk-horror slowburner, with some disturbing elements and an unexpected bonkers finale. If you like folk horror movies and already have a subscription to Disney+/ Hulu, I recommend giving it a watch!
Writer & Director: Ben Steiner
Country & year: USA, 2022
Actors: Jemima Rooper, Kate Dickie, Sarah Paul, Simon Meacock, Nick Haverson, Andrew Akins, Mandy Aldridge, Nini Anamah, Samantha Arnold, Franc Ashman
IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt17202326/
