Serial Mom

Don't trust me, it's not one you're gonna pick.

I'm gonna go with one of his early films, Serial Mom.

Oh.

Did you guys ever see this? He was the son-

I think I did once.

He was the son in Serial Mom.

I did not know that he was the son in that.

Yeah, which also stars Kathleen Turner as the-

Don't trust me, it's not one you're gonna pick.

I'm gonna go with one of his early films, Serial Mom Did you guys ever see this? He was the son-

I think I did once

...

he was the son in Serial Mom.

I did not know that he was the son in that.

Yeah, which also stars Kathleen Turner as the serial mom-

Yes

Yeah.

I think in John Waters' Serial Mom, they're watching it in the video store on the TV.

Mm.

You know? It feels like a horror classic that everyone's sort of vaguely aware of, but I don't know that a lot-

In this satirical horror comedy, Mother has three adult sons that are also special like Jason and encourages her violent sons to assault and torture women.

Boy moms, am I right? Speaking of satire, John Waters' 1994 film Serial Mom puts family-friendly American sitcoms of the 1990s like Full House and Step by Step on figurative and literal trial with its depiction of serial killing mom Beverly Sutphin as she murders people around town for trivial offenses.

Beverly, of course, was acquitted of all charges.

The last film I'll discuss in the monstrous mommy subgenre is the complete opposite tonally of Serial Mom, and it's the 2007 New French Extremity film Inside, as the nameless La Femme, AKA the Woman in English, tortures a pregnant widow on Christmas Eve with the sole intention of cutting her open and extracting her baby as revenge for being involved in a car accident in which La Femme lost her own baby.

As for the other side of the matriarchal coin, some of horror's most significant protective mothers that have prevailed in iconography include Rosemary Woodhouse from my personal favorite scary movie, Rosemary's Baby, Chris MacNeil, AKA Regan's mom, in The Exorcist, Donna Trenton in Cujo, and Adelaide from Us, who, like Ursula in Other Mommy, is similarly punished for past choices by a more sinister doppelganger that threatens her family.

More recently, within the last decade or so, we've been witnessing more complex depictions of motherhood in horror, with horror moms grappling with their relationship to their motherhood roles and with their children, with movies like 2014's The Babadook, as well as Goodnight Mommy and 2018's Hereditary, another personal favorite of mine, and last year's Bring Her Back, as these moms fluctuate between monstrous and vulnerable and deem motherhood as something in the middle between rewarding and nightmarish.

No, no, it's Michael McDonald, you know?

By the way, I was thinking Serial Mom, very different movie than Stepmom.

Stepmom is, they perform this song, Susan Sarandon and her kids, and it's adorable.

And every time I hear the song, I can picture the scene.

And one of the most underrated movies of all time, in my opinion.

Mr.

Mom.

Mr.