protean depravity

With all the hits the women's human rights had to take the last couple of years worldwide it wouldn't be too far-fetched to say life is indeed imitating art in that we're about to embrace Margaret Atwood's handmaid dystopia in our everyday lives. In a most recent development, the restriction of one of these rights, the reproductive autonomy and control over one's own body, has justly caused a wild debate, fights and protests after the overturning of Roe v Wade by the SCOTUS.

Treacherous mother, Hereditary (2018) Say farewell to Jack Torrance, it is now mothers who attack, betray, damage, make suffer and hurt with their absence in horror movies. I have watched three horror movies last weekend, “Becky”, “The Lodge” and “Come to Daddy” and ALL of them are marked by the absence of the mother – either because of a sad death, a tragic suicide or the physical absence on a father-son vacation. And that absence has devastating consequences. Is that a coincidence? For anyone who watched horror movies in the 80s and 90s the lack of parental authority is something not only familiar, but almost a prerequisite, but what about only the mother disappearing? Is that a thing in horror movies right now? A little research into the topicalization of mothers in horror shows that mothers are actually depicted so frequently in horror movies that it is safe to say they rule over the genre. Mothers have ALWAYS lived in the castle and their absence has frequently been the stuff of n...