Tagline:
The mother of all evil.

Wide Release Date:
October 21, 2022

Directed by:
Ben Steiner
Written by:
Ben Steiner
Produced by:
David Brooks, Jenna Cavelle, Kate Dain, Eoin O’Faolain, Arbi Pedrossian, Ian Sharp

Starring:
Jemima Rooper
Kate Dickie
Sarah Paul
Simon Meacock
Nick Haverson

PREGAME THOUGHTS

I was looking to find a new-ish horror title while scanning through Hulu. It’s always fun seeing adults fight with their parents as if they were still children! What does that have to do with horror? Well, there’s some black stuff coming out of the woman’s eye, that seems pretty horrific to me.

THE 650(ish)-WORD SYNOPSIS

Laura (Jemima Rooper) is approaching middle age and is becoming stressed to the point of falling apart, focusing too much of her energy on parties and cocaine and not enough on work and making money and being an actual adult. Even her friend is like “yeah, you’re a mess” after she snorts a line in the middle of the night before going to work in a few hours. This comes to a head when she gets catty with her boss/friend and storms out quitting. That night, she collapses of an overdose in the bathroom. While she is, for all intents and purposes, dead on the floor, a mysterious black liquid creeps across the room and sucks itself up into her body. She is revived.

Man, I love it when I die and then some creepy black gunk brings me back to life.

The next day, Laura’s mother Celia (Kate Dickie) calls her out of nowhere and tells her that she’s dying. They haven’t seen or talked in 20 years, but Celia would like her daughter to come back home. With nothing else better to do, and with an opportunity to confront her mother about all her various turmoils, bugaboos, and inner demons, she obliges and returns to her childhood home.

Things are awkward. Celia bounces between sweet-as-sugar and sour-as-lemons while Laura fights with her at every opportunity. Along the way, mysterious black liquid intermittently drips out of each other’s faces, which they both attempt to hide from each other. Laura’s childhood friend, Abi, is unforgiving that Laura just up and left her for so many years. Townsfolk are passive-aggressive. Yada yada yada.

Slowly, Laura begins to realize that something is very eerie and wrong in her small, dismal little town. We, the audience, see at least two instances of Celia trying to unsuccessfully sedate and/or kill her own daughter for unknown reasons. There are two old people fucking in a car that seem to be scared while fucking, which is funny. She discovers Celia’s own personal Kama Sutra diary full of doodled sex position diagrams and ratings of how good of a lay everyone is in the village. That, plus all the black ooze dripping out of the orifices. That stuff is eerie as well.

Oh man, the scat fetish thing is not going well.

As the movie nears the end, some of the jumbled pieces start coming together. Laura’s father had walked into what I’m going to describe as a “magic swamp” to sacrifice himself to create whatever horrible god (the titular “Matriarch”) is running the show in town. This also allowed Celia to have a baby. Laura was birthed by this creature and the creature bestowed upon both of them this weird, black blood replacement that keeps them young and scrappy. Celia started using this blood-like liquid to sell to the townsfolk for money and esteem, but everyone has become dependent upon it. Laura witnesses a very creepy ritual at the church involving Celia’s black fluid lactations, some titty sucking, and a naked orgy. The only people not involved with any of this unpleasantness was Abi and her family. They refused to sell their souls to this brand of spooky dark magic!

Here’s the twist: Abi had cancer and decided a few years ago to give into the healing powers of the almighty, creepy, worm-spewing Matriarch. Celia has been running low on juice and is trying to sacrifice her daughter to the god. And because Laura’s actually the daughter of the Matriarch, the Matriarch doesn’t kill her. It just cradles her in its arms.

Laura ends up freeing the Matriarch from the town and confronts Celia back at the church. The townsfolk are old and crying for more of that sweet, sweet black juice, but the freed Matriarch means the well has dried up! Celia still tries to keep everyone at her mercy, but then Laura bashes her fucking skull in with the butt of her shotgun. Just fucking wails on this lady.

THE BLACK GUNK ENDS NOW, MA’AM!!

In the aftermath, Laura inexplicably drowns herself in the same magic swamp that her father had killed himself in. What becomes of this is not at all addressed.

TOM’S DISCUSSION CORNER

TOPIC 1 — I Have No Idea if I Liked It

This movie is absolutely out-of-control nuts. It starts off very slow, and the only truly supernatural thing to happen within the first hour is the black goo entering Laura’s face. But if she was already the daughter of the Matriarch, why did this goo have to enter her body in the first place?

I digress already. It takes until almost the end of the movie before any real horror elements are introduced, and it seems so out of left field compared to the tone of the rest of the movie that I sat there bewildered that it was even happening. Perhaps I haven’t watched enough horror movies. The sudden CGI worm-spewing demon, and the weird church orgy with everyone sucking Kate Dickey’s black gunk lactating nipples, it was all so jarring after all that narcissistic mother narrative. It does make sense, though, that Celia’s actions were motivated by selfishness in such an extreme manner.

Ahh, mother. So warm and kind.

I would benefit with a re-watch which I am ABSOLUTELY NOT going to do, ha! But I’ve been expending some of my brain energy piecing together all the threads and mythology behind whatever the fuck this all is, and it at least there’s consistency to character actions and what it takes to appease the Matriarch demon and what appeasing the Matriarch demon actually does. I only find the existence of the magic swamp to be the only unexplained element to the story, and why Laura’s father knew to drown himself in order to appease a Matriarch into spawning a child, but hey! I’m not here to criticize movies! I’m just here to pound my knuckles against my keyboard until I accidntally brak a fw of my mor important lttrs.

As you can plainly see, my equivocating ramblings prove that I don’t hold a strong opinion in either direction. I cannot answer whether or not I personally think this is a good movie or a bad movie.

The shitty CGI sure skews my opinion in one direction, though.

TOPIC 2 — Narcissism

I read a bit about how Celia’s behavior triggered a lot of people who grew up with a narcissistic parent. Without divulging too much, my life was also surrounded by such people, but not to extremely toxic levels. For a while, I thought Laura was being unreasonably combative with Celia, but maybe that speaks to my own experiences. I always learned that being combative makes me feel worse in the long-run. That’s how they really get you.

I do so much for you, and you never show me any appreciation for it!

It’s interesting to see the justification for Celia’s behavior toward Laura… well, “justification” in her eyes. Wasting away without replenishment of the nourishing black gunk is as good a reason as any to try bashing your daughter over the head with a large object and sacrificing her to some terrifying entity. The narcissism stuff is just the red herring!

I have to say that the very best part of Matriarch was Laura bashing Celia’s head in with the butt of her gun. This was brutal, graphic skull-smashing. Her ruined mess of a head was just an awful pile of black gunk. Here’s the best line of the film: “You’re not my mother, you’re just the cunt I came out of.”

IMDb TRIVIA FUNHOUSE!

During the first week of shooting Director Ben Steiner’s son contracted Covid and so Ben had to direct the first few days from his car.
Hilarious! Something like this is too dumb to be made up. I’m imagining Ben Steiner trying to yell through fogged up windows and beeping his horn whenever someone screws up. Driving around the sets, running over the crew’s chairs, knocking down camera stands. Now there’s a movie.

Filming was originally meant to finish in November 2021 but was shutdown due to lead actress Jemima Rooper contracting Covid 19. Filming restarted in January 2022.
Ben Steiner’s son was running around the sets coughing on everyone, I guess. Steiner should’ve hit him with his car.

The film’s original title was “Wormeater”, but was changed to “Matriarch” after network executives felt it would put off the female audience.
Hmm, fair enough. As a member of the male audience, I would’ve shoved babies and pregnant women out of the away while running to the theater for a movie called “Wormeater”.

Movie’s kinda fucked up, innit?

IS IT WORTH A WATCH?

Meh. Not really, I guess. At best I can recommend to watch it if you’re curious. I’ll never watch this movie again, though! Most of my problem is that it was really slow-going for the first 3/4 of the movie, than it ran off the rails so hard it knocked my dick in the dirt!

If you want your dick in the dirt, go for it.