Director Adam O’Brien’s claustrophobic thriller Mom, written by Philip Kalin-Hajdu, is a gripping and harrowing exploration of memory and motherhood. The unassuming title masks a picture that entangles the viewer in an unsettling, psychologically plausible world surrounding the nature of trauma and the human mind’s desperate attempt to rationalize irrationality. This work lingers, inviting one to experience the protagonist’s fractured reality while simultaneously challenging them to perceive the truth.
Meredith (Emily Hampshire), nicknamed “M,” and her husband Jared (François Arnaud) are excited to bring home their newborn. Soon enough, the stress of rearing a constantly crying and always hungry baby wears on them both, but especially M. After a tragic accident, M spirals even further into mental instability, leaving Jared and others close to her no other choice but to leave her on her own. This causes M to get worse.
Hampshire delivers a lovely performance, embodying a deeply sympathetic and unsettling character. Her portrayal is layered, capturing the relentless exhaustion and creeping horror that accompanies postnatal depression and psychosis. As a woman struggling to grasp her role as a mother, the actor’s expressions and movements speak volumes. Hampshire delivers a tour de force performance. Arnaud reverses the idea of victimhood in horror. In this case, the male becomes preyed upon by the female, as shown when Jared confronts the horrors of the bath sequence.
“…excited to bring home their newborn…After a tragic accident, M spirals even further into mental instability…”
O’Brien’s direction blurs the line between reality and delusion in the vein of Roman Polanski; specifically, Repulsion, but that filmmaker casts a shadow over the entire production. Water plays a huge part, as it did in another of Polanski’s early works, Knife in the Water, which is about the disintegration of a marriage onboard a yacht. Water is cleaned up, referred to, and is the catalyst that drives the most critical moment of the film. Mom is filled with a suffocating unease. The house becomes a character; its empty walls and oppressive shadows reflect Meredith’s deteriorating mental state. Subtle but effective sound design heightens the tension, from the shrieking smoke alarm to the dripping of water.
While the narrative treads familiar ground that’s been explored in psychological horror classics plus recent maternal horror works like Still/Born, it distinguishes itself by focusing on a singular, unraveling consciousness. The storytelling gives the audience a peek into Meredith’s internal chaos. The opening and closing shots of the house desolated after what has happened may be familiar within the genre, yet they produce the effect of looking like a battlefield after a long fight. Even as reality disintegrates around Meredith, Hampshire’s performance ensures that the core remains deeply felt, making every moment resonate with distressing authenticity.
The horror throughout is not jump scares nor supernatural malevolence but in the relentless erosion of self-identity. The film does not shy away from the reality of mental illness, nor does it attempt to offer easy answers. Instead, this is a well-crafted, disorienting, and devastating experience. A few audience members may find its ambiguity challenging, but it is that very quality that’ll haunt all who give Mom a watch.
In the end, Mom is less about what is real and more about the inescapable torment of a mind crumbling under the weight of its fears and grief. O’Brien brings the chills and thought-provoking themes to life with style and subtlety. This is psychological horror at its most intimate and unsettling.
"…psychological horror at its most intimate and unsettling."
