Motherly [2021]
“I can’t be anybody but me.”
I’ve just finished Craig David Wallace’s home-invasion thriller, Motherly. While not a debut per se [it’s Wallace’s second feature film] it is his first not based on something else he’d worked on. As such, I am very intrigued by what else he will have to offer the film world in the future. Motherly is intelligent, engaging, and [perhaps accidentally] quite funny by the time credits begin to roll. I’m not one for the home-invasion genre as they typically involve a bunch of characters doing a bunch of things for reasons that only the plot gods can understand. While not as smart or well crafted, Motherly recalls the masterfully made 2021 horror/thriller Coming Home in the Dark moreso than the banal and insipid Hush, from 2016.
In Motherly, we follow Kate and her daughter, Beth, as they live an isolated life on an farmstead in the middle of nowhere while they hide out from some heretofore veiled danger – ooh, ah, intriguing and original, I know. Just you wait, because the train is only just beginning to roll. And roll it does, as Motherly spends only a small amount of time jerking us around before getting into the thick of it. I won’t get any further into the plot because it’s better to experience it afresh.
Where a lot of these films go wrong is leaving the audience hanging on the line too long before anything interesting happens. Typically they do this for “character development” but all the characters are usually such twats and generally unlikable that any and all time spent on them is entirely wasted. The first 30-minutes-or-so of most films in this genre force you to sit through NPC style conversations between characters with less depth than the skin of a tangerine that’s been genetically modified for easy peeling as the sound track and camera force you to look at stuff and taunting, “Ooo is someone out there? Are they going to hurt our characters? What was that shadow in the bushes?” These openings are always so irritating to me because, yes. Yes, of course they are out there. Of course they are going to hurt our characters and our characters are likely to hurt them in return. You and I both know what we’re in for so, in the words of Monty Python,
“Get on with it!”
And “get on with it” Motherly does.
To be completely candid, Motherly does move at the same rate as everything else in the genre, but what happens before those moments is so much more clever, interesting, and culminates into something so much more than your usual window smashing, knife wielding, screaming and tripping nonsense; that you hardly notice. You’re not waiting; you’re engaged and intrigued by the clever camerawork, wonderfully susurrus and eerie score, and mostly excellent performances from everyone involved. At an even 80-minute runtime, Motherly does more with what it has than most films that last well over the 120 mark. This isn’t to say this is some masterpiece in cinematic horror, but it is a far cry above anything else in the survival break-in genre.
There’s a parallel somewhere within the confines of Motherly’s script [or, more aptly, just outside those confines where I don’t think the writers meant to tread] between this and Australian smash allegory, Crocodile Dundee 3: Crocodile Dundee in Los Angeles. While Dundee is clearly a metaphorical film about grief, loss, and the darkness that accompanies those things to its core; Motherly CAN be similarly allegorical if you decide that it is. Though, what Motherly is lacking in this regard is the constantly screaming, car seat kicking, mostly insufferable nightmare child of its Australian counterpart because Beth is well conceived, well acted, and generally mostly likeable. Wait… we’re not talking about Crocodile Dundee at all are we… Who’s to say?
Either way, the pieces are there, but I don’t think they weren’t designed to be interpreted as such. The film is clearly meant to just be what it shows you onscreen and not discussed further at the Philosophies on Parenting class that you’re taking Wednesdays at 4:30pm. Additionally, if you ARE taking parenting tips away from this film, I’d advise you specifically to NOT discuss those philosophies at said class and also probably move out of state in case anyone even thinks you will. But, to each their own.
By the end, Motherly is a thoroughly entertaining ride and an easy recommendation for any fan of the horror, slasher, home-invasion, or thriller genre. It isn’t going to change your life, but it isn’t going to make you wish you’d sprung for something else to watch either. If you want something better and darker, check out Coming Home in the Dark by James Ashcroft and if you want something that tries harder to be an allegory but mishandles itself into a nothing snore-fest, try Hatching by Hanna Bergholm.
“But it’s my birthday!”
