Film Review: You Are Not My Mother is an Irish horror that engages with depression and generational issues

"a feature-length debut that marks out writer/director Kate Dolan as a talent to watch"

Carolyn Bracken in You Are Not My Mother

★★★

You Are Not My Mother (16s) stars Hazel Doupe as Char, a teenager growing up on a suburban Dublin estate who gradually begins to suspect that something isn’t quite right with her mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken). The symptoms — torpor, emotional distancing, a refusal to leave her bed — suggest depression, but Char isn’t convinced.

As Halloween approaches, and Angela’s behaviour turns increasingly bizarre, Char fears the worst — and her mood isn’t helped when her grandmother starts muttering about ‘changelings’ who are abducted by a supernatural force and return home possessed by a malign spirit.

Written and directed by Kate Dolan, You Are Not My Mother engages with a number of themes — among them depression, inter-generational dysfunction and bullying — but mainly functions as a psychological horror that asks how well we can possibly know other people, even our own mothers, and what they are capable of.

Hazel Doupe is excellent in the lead role, and particularly when attempting to articulate her half-formed fears to her new friend Suzanne (Jordanne Jones), and there’s strong support from Carolyn Bracken, who creates a fully-rounded persona for Angela being her passive, vacant character. The latter stages are implausibly melodramatic, but otherwise You Are Not My Mother is a feature-length debut that marks out Kate Dolan as a talent to watch.

(cinema release)