The newly released Irish horror film You Are Not My Mother, which was originally shown at the 2021 Toronto International Film Festival, is a multifaceted work of existential dread. The debut feature film from writer-director Kate Dolan is a story about family, paganism, and what happens when we lose those we love. Specifically, it is most curious about how we can lose them not to death, at least not right away, but to the horrors within their own mind. It is also a film that engages with the collective societal failing that abandons those dealing with a mental health crisis when they are in most need. It is about the passing of responsibility, ensuring that the challenges of taking care of them fall to their loved ones to do on their own. In the case of this film, it is all about how a child must try to grow up while attempting to save her mother from her decline that threatens to consume her.

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Image via Magnolia Pictures

The child, Char (Hazel Doupe), has more than her own share of problems she is facing down, especially at school where she faces relentless bullying. This is made worse by the fact that her mother Angela (Carolyn Bracken) is not able to take care of herself or her daughter. An early scene in a car ride on the way to school sees Char try to gently ask her mother if she can get food at the store so that they will have something to eat at home. It becomes clear that the daughter is concerned about her mother while also trying to advocate for her needs. Angela seems almost entirely disconnected from the conversation and nearly gets them in a car accident that is only averted by Char turning the wheel at the last second to avert disaster. It is only the beginning of how dark things begin to get.

The inciting incident is when Angela goes missing and the family is unable to find her. Her brother, Aaron (Paul Reid), tries to talk to the police and desperately convince them to help. However, the officer who visits their home tells them that there is nothing she is either capable of or considering doing. It is the first hint we get of the central theme of societal abandonment and how those left behind can fall through the cracks when failed by our institutions. When Angela does eventually return home she seems initially cheery though this is quickly revealed to be a facade and that something is seriously wrong. She wanders around in the night and seems almost possessed, stricken by something supernatural that can’t be shaken no matter how hard her daughter pleads with her. A particularly unsettling scene where she begins maniacally dancing before hurting herself as well as Char establishes the stakes.

The strength of the film comes in not just these effective scenes but in the broader thematic significance. As it reveals the growing weight being placed on Char and how she must bear the brunt of the challenges of caring for her mother with minimal resources, we realize how her individual struggle is the result of a collective failing. Had there been some sort of more robust societal intervention or a mental support system in place, something real-life Ireland is itself facing a crisis of, then both mother and daughter would not have had to face such pain alone. Instead, the failure to support those who need it most threatens to rob a child of both her mother and her childhood. From getting her mother's medication while her uncle works to being an untrained crisis interventionist when things get quite bad, this is too much to ask of any individual person. It is in the real-life horror of our institutions failing us that the face of the supernatural fear is made all the more impactful. It shows in painstaking detail how, when we decide to leave behind those who are in need of help the most, it falls to their loved ones to pick up the pieces.

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Image via TIFF

With all this in mind, it is worth acknowledging a well-taken counterargument and frustration with horror as metaphor films. Many detractors point out these films are centered around superficial trauma without fully engaging with it beyond the surface level scares and initial premise. While these do exist and are ones I share in the frustration of, that thankfully doesn’t happen here. Instead, You Are Not My Mother is a shining example of how to do this story right by packing both emotional subtlety and a deeper excavation of the pain facing the people at its center. You learn their lives alongside the way it reveals, without preaching or calling attention to itself, how there is a broader societal failing that is letting them down. It doesn’t tell you this in big, elongated monologues but in the quiet scenes where Char is left alone to figure out how to save her mother. It is through her struggles and the growing sense of dread that you begin to understand the dire reality of her all-too-real situation.

Without taking away from the lasting impact that the film finds in its conclusion, it doesn’t provide all that many definite answers even as it does find a tentative peace. However, even as it offers a small glimpse of hope, it still makes explicit how fragile things remain for the family that remains largely left to fend for themselves. Their existence, like many trying to live with mental health problems, is made tenuous and precarious precisely because society has determined that they are not a priority. Their suffering and pain is allowed to happen, making it unlikely that their situation will get better anytime soon. Even as Char begins to look to a ritual as a way out for her and her mother, the fact looms over the story that no such mechanism exists in our world. Instead, those who should be helped by the systems and structures we put in place are left to find a way to survive on their own. This dark reality perpetually hangs over You Are Not My Mother, ensuring that it is the type of horror that will always cut deep in what it reveals about our enduring failures that show no signs of getting better.