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The Conversation
The Conversation
Kerry Hegarty, Associate Professor of Film Studies, Miami University

The ‘Death Mother’: Horror’s most unnerving villain

Tess Carl Jung Toni Collette Ellen Peter
Toni Collette, right, and Milly Shapiro in 'Hereditary' (2018). IMDB

Horror films draw us into a world where our deepest anxieties are laid bare. They illuminate the darker recesses of the human psyche – ones that we often prefer to ignore.

And some of the most unsettling things we can imagine, it seems, are not zombies or aliens or demons, but ones that are closer to home: mothers. Bad ones.

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