Horror movies work best when they touch on a primal fear that the audience can relate to. Everyone can relate to a mother’s fear of losing their child. In the classics of horror cinema, mothers have lost their children to everything from demonic possession, like Chris MacNeil in The Exorcist, to warped space-time, like Ellen Ripley in Aliens.
From the paranoid pregnancy of Rosemary’s Baby to the post-apocalyptic chills of A Quiet Place to the intense grief of Hereditary, some of the greatest horror movies ever made are about the fears of motherhood.
Bird Box (2018)
Netflix scored one of its biggest hits with Bird Box. Set in a post-apocalyptic world populated by entities that cause people to take their own lives if they look at them, Bird Box stars a blindfolded Sandra Bullock trying to get two young children down a river in a rowboat.
Eric Heisserer’s screenplay, adapted from the novel of the same name by Josh Malerman, is a little thin on thematic substance. But Bullock’s committed performance keeps the audience on the edge of their seats.
Serial Mom (1994)
John Waters is renowned for his transgressive cult films, but in the mid-1990s, he took a satirical stab at a Hitchcockian thriller with the suburban murders of Serial Mom. Kathleen Turner stars as Beverly Sutphin, an unassuming middle-class housewife who moonlights as a psychotic serial killer.
Beverly kills anybody who wrongs her family or even says a disparaging word about them. She’s clearly evil, but she’s hard to root against because Turner’s performance is so hilarious and her murderous motivations come from a place of love.
The Babadook (2014)
Jennifer Kent instantly made a name for herself with her acclaimed debut feature The Babadook. A staple of “elevated horror,” The Babadook revolves around a single mother who comes to the haunting realization that the monster her son is afraid of is all too real.
Like all the best horror filmmakers, Kent doesn’t rely on cheap jump scares to get a reaction from her audience. Instead, throughout The Babadook, she creates a creepy atmosphere.
Us (2019)
Jordan Peele’s sophomore directorial effort, Us, starts off as a home invasion movie and turns into a unique kind of zombie movie. “The Tethered,” an underground cult of neglected American clones dressed in red onesies, rises up to reclaim the surface world from their counterparts.
Lupita Nyong’o gives a stunning dual performance as Adelaide, a mother of two determined to keep her family safe through the apocalypse, and her Tethered alter ego, “Red.” The movie builds to a jaw-dropping twist that questions the meaning of heroes and villains.
The Exorcist (1973)
Chris MacNeil has a tough enough time balancing her acting career with being a single mother to her 12-year-old daughter Regan before Regan is possessed by the demon Pazuzu in William Friedkin’s horror masterpiece The Exorcist. The movie is as much about a mother’s anxiety is it is about demonic possession.
Ellen Burstyn received a much-deserved Oscar nod for her performance as a concerned mother who has to resort to hiring a pair of exorcists to save her daughter from the Devil’s wrath.
A Quiet Place (2018)
Real-life parents John Krasinski and Emily Blunt brought the foibles of parenthood to the screen in a genre context with the thrilling tale of A Quiet Place. Parenting is tough under the easiest of circumstances, but it’s particularly difficult in a post-apocalyptic wasteland full of bloodthirsty aliens who see with their ears.
In the world of A Quiet Place, breaking silence means courting death. Blunt’s character Evelyn Abbott is put in the unfortunate position of giving birth while a noise-sensitive alien prowls around the house.
Mother! (2017)
Darren Aronofsky distilled the story of the Bible into his polarizing psychological horror opus mother!, anchored by a phenomenal performance by Jennifer Lawrence. Lawrence plays a pregnant woman whose husband, “Him,” played by Javier Bardem, invites his cult followers into their remote country home to disrupt their tranquil existence.
The movie’s overt religious themes and graphic violence were met with controversy. But deep down, mother! is a story about a mother trying to protect her baby.
Aliens (1986)
James Cameron’s Aliens is a wildly satisfying follow-up to its predecessor. It’s just as tightly crafted, tautly terrifying, and full of thought-provoking themes. It also has a surplus of spectacular action set-pieces and an emotionally engaging story that draws on Ellen Ripley’s maternal instincts.
Ripley learns that her own daughter has grown up and died of old age while she was in cryosleep between movies. She becomes a surrogate maternal figure to Newt, the orphaned sole survivor of a xenomorph-ravaged human colony, and Aliens becomes a mother-daughter story. Even the xenomorph queen is a mother trying to protect her young.
Hereditary (2018)
Toni Collette was egregiously snubbed by the Academy for her breathtaking turn as Annie Graham in Hereditary. Shortly after losing her own mother, Annie has to face every parent’s worst nightmare – outliving their child – when her young daughter Charlie is decapitated in a horrendous car accident.
Annie feels intense grief, rage, and resentment toward the son responsible for Charlie’s death. Not only is Hereditary a chilling tale of pagan cultists; it’s a harrowing family drama.
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Based on the novel of the same name by Ira Levin, Rosemary’s Baby is the definitive cinematic portrait of paranoia. Pregnant Rosemary becomes convinced that her husband has been indoctrinated by a Satanic cult conspiring against her unborn baby.
The genius of the movie is that it doesn’t confirm Rosemary’s fears to be true until the chilling final scene. Before then, it could feasibly all be in Rosemary’s head like the people around her keep insisting.