‘Matriarchy’ is a new Hulu horror film that, like ‘Predator: La dam’, has been released in Spain through Disney+. Director Ben Steiner is also writing the script to expand his 2018 short film ‘Urn’, which also stems from the platform itself, to combine elements of childhood trauma, folk horror and lovecraftian universes Without too many surprises, but with some dark elements that are not so common in big screen proposals either.
The film follows Laura (Jemima Rooper), who lives a methodical professional life until he has a sort of overdose that he manages to survive. The incident is represented through the segregation of a black mud that consumes her, to later begin to produce the strange substance through her own body. Reeling from her, she returns to her rural British hometown to seek help, with her estranged mother, Celia (Kate Dickie), but as Laura delves deeper into her own mysteries, she finds herself inextricably drawn to the darker side of her community.
Lascivious rituals and perverse education
‘Matriarchy’ moves slowly towards a great revelation that does not tell anything new, but does have some not-so-typical surprises in this classic tale of rural horror. Ominous music is dotting the trickle of tracks throughout the story, but it never seems like it’s really moving into anything we’re not expecting. Within this type of film, the little-known ‘Reunion’ (2020) is very similar and much more effective, here the first two thirds are riddled with television drama dynamics and strange and mechanical dialogue parts.
Laura’s character is strange in itself, she seems to go from soft to unpleasant in a matter of seconds, but she has a story with her mother that leads us to think that her character has been forged in ways not very usual to the rest of the society, to which is added normalizing her lesbian sexuality, which becomes an element with some importance. This doesn’t make the dramatic turns feel a bit forced and spoils the nuances of a very interesting introduction to the dark a bit.
The town is full of strange happenings, and there are some surprises that raise the bar, such as a certain group suckling scene with black slime that breaks the expectations of the predictable in its development and looks in the face of the sex scene of ‘Midsommar’ without messing up. In fact, the sexual is combined with blood at various times, with a rather graphic orgy in a church, kissing couples that deteriorate and always with the sticky liquid present.
An irregular but bold proposal
There are moments of violence, skulls smashed in with butts, a baby with a misshapen face, and generally a lot of dripping, maggots and rot. Meanwhile, Laura’s crisis with focuses on the consequences of an abusive upbringing and the different emotional scars caused by an archetypal terrible mother figure that Dickie nails again after her roles in ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘The Witch’ . She is always a reliable and committed presence in all of her roles no matter how small, but in ‘Matriarchy’ he perfects his role as an ogre within his own family.
Jemima Rooper does not do it badly either, but it is disconcerting, reflecting the consequences of growing up without affection, distrust and lack of rest due to emotional alertness. The climax of the film is more than interesting and presents good sequences, such as certain revelation that seems taken directly from a Clive Barker storyin which the classic Lovecraftian dynamics and the daring of female ancestral figures and British madonnas come together, but it can be noticed a little rushed compared to the rest of the film.
The resolution appears quickly after the tension has been building slowly and steadily, it seems that there is a part of the knot that has disappeared, being one of the few times in which a film asks for a little more footage. But ‘Matriarchy’ as a whole leaves a better memory than its particular ideas, and its uglyness is giving clues and indicating that everything is hostile, dark, and this, together with some powerful and shameless imagery is way more than anyone could ask for from a Disney+ premiere.