Director Ben Steiner’s Matriarch is genuinely unpleasant and at times disturbing to watch. This folk horror chiller is genuinely unsettling with an oppressive atmosphere that nearly chokes the life out of you. The first half of the film focuses on Laura played with acidic sincerity by Jemima Rooper. Laura works in a nameless metropolis at a seemingly compelling advertising job. She has an office, and a friendly, supportive boss. She’s also about to close a major account. Beneath her composed veneer lies a vipers nest of insecurities and life threatening vices. Besides drinking constantly, snorting cocaine and freaking out her on-again, off-again girlfriend she also suffers from a tragic eating disorder. The amount of self-loathing Rooper’s character exhibits is scary and unfortunately relatable to me. It disturbed me how much it disturbed me. I glimpsed flashes of my own life in Laura’s struggles. There is something missing in her life and the banality of it all is a pall that hangs over everything in this first act.
The movie kicks into gear once Laura’s estranged mother, Celia played by Kate Dickie suddenly reestablishes contact. Being in a vulnerable mental state, Laura agrees to return to her rural hometown which looks a lot like many famous creepy Hollywood villages. It’s clear right away that the relationship between Laura and her mother is strained. Celia’s welcoming warmth and conciliatory overtures are all met with such venom that, at first, it’s difficult to empathize with Laura. But quickly the veneer starts to slip. Laura runs into a childhood friend who acts strangely. All the villagers seem to worship her mother and it appears as if Celia is drugging her daughter?
While a lot of the movie relies on atmosphere to disturb and horrify, we do get treated to some magnificently unpleasant imagery. There’s a nightmare sequence early on with a mother feasting on her baby and the movie gets progressively more violent and gory. Although some elements like a sex cult, Druidic earth deity and crazed villagers are nothing new, director Steiner is skilled at framing it all. If I have any gripe, it’s with the film’s unrelenting darkness. Rooper’s Laura is not simply a flawed protagonist, she’s frankly unpleasant to spend time with. She spurns any positive presence in her life and when she attempts to reconnect with family it goes horribly wrong.
Ultimately, the last thirty minutes prove the journey worth taking. The ending is a bit murky and ambiguous, but there is enough mayhem to satisfy most gorehounds. Matriarch is the latest in a number of streaming exclusives that have landed on the Hulu streaming service in 2022. It was one of the early entrants in the streaming space along with CBS and their service CBS All Access. Despite this, the product was lackluster and aimless for years before Disney acquired the company a few years ago. If films like Predator: Prey, the Hellraiser remake and Matriarch are any indication, the service might finally be ready to compete with heavyweights like Netflix.
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