‘Mom’ Director Adam O’Brien On Motherhood and House Centipedes
The horror genre loves a good bad mom, whether she be Pamela Voorhees from Friday the 13th or Annie Graham from Hereditary. With so many films about the terrors of motherhood, how do you forge your own path? Adam O’Brien has an idea in his new film Mom, which has its world premiere at FrightFest on March 9, 2024.
Read the full synopsis below:
A struggling mother is abandoned by her family and partner after a horrific incident. As she falls further into isolation, she begins to be haunted by a sinister entity that is determined to make her relive her darkest moments.
Dread Central spoke with O’Brien about how parenthood shaped him, portraying the reality of post-partum depression, and the atrocity that is the house centipede.
Dread Central: How long has Mom been in development slash percolating for you?
Adam O’Brien: I wanted just to create something about inner demons. From there, we created a treatment just to see how we can place everything. But I always felt it was missing a connection, a grounded connection with characters, something more real. And I just tried to figure it out. At some point, I spoke with Philip Kalin-Hajdu, the writer, who also produces with me. He had this idea and said, “Hey, look, my wife is a nurse, and she had those things about partum psychosis and everything, and we can maybe recollect stories from different women and just put it in something very realistic as much as possible, but with a cover of the supernatural.
So I’m like, “Oh, that can be very interesting.” It’s not a subject we talk about a lot and stuff. But I said to Phil, “Look, man, we need to be faithful and real about that as much as possible.” So we put all those stories in one character. We tried to do something different.
DC: So did you interview women or did Phil?
AO: Phil interviewed his wife as well as other women with various experiences. Some experienced severe postpartum depression (PPD), while others spoke more of simply being exhausted and doubting their maternal instincts. Emily also put a lot of effort into building this character and speaking with women who had PPD. At the end of the day, keeping true to being a film rooted in the horror genre, we worked together to find the balance. Supernatural and grounded at the same time.
DC: Well, and especially because such a real topic and you want to make sure you’re not exploiting it too hard. It’s entertainment, but you still want to do right by it. How did you work against the tropes of motherhood in horror movies we’ve seen before?
AO: That was a challenge because the “bad mother” tropes have been in films forever. That being said, when we created Mom, PPD was not seen too often in this way – through genre film – and as a society it is still not being spoken about enough. We wanted to ensure that the film was accessible and entertaining to watch (in terms of the style and story), while also ensuring that we were touching on a subject in a different way. We wanted to connect with the audience and have them recognize if they have kids, moments that they may have experienced as well. Not every misstep with a baby is because of PPD. The world of parenting is filled with judgment and pressure from outside the family unit. Do we carry the baby the “right way”, or feed them the “right way”. What comes naturally for one is not the case for another… These are all things layered into the story that are relatable and have nothing to do with PPD.
And I did, by the way, put in tropes that were cut in the editing room. We were like, “No, we’ve seen that a thousand times. What the hell is that?” So we dropped it because we were like, “No, let’s try to tell a story differently.” This is why Mom felt dreamy.
I think this drove us around those tropes that all those movies have. And also the fact that it’s grounded in some real stories. Just to give you an example,t here’s a scene in the movie where Jared is bringing the baby because he’s crying and she just needs to breastfeed the baby, which is totally normal scene in the life of a parent. But what he did and the way that she reacted, this is something that I did as a father. And even me, I was doing this and I had my daughter, and I looked at my wife. I’m like, “Oh, damn, I’m such an asshole doing that.” What the hell? I was thinking because it’s true. You don’t think you’re just doing.
As a father, you’re clumsy a little bit. You try to support, but you don’t do enough, and you don’t know your position. You don’t know where you are. Francois played that very beautifully. In the editing room, we’re just shaping that in that way. It’s just small things. It’s nothing. You know what I mean? But putting more things on the character.
DC: I love hearing how filmmakers craft their stories and the little details that go into a movie that you don’t always maybe catch or think about. Again, this movie does feel very real to a point and it’s also just incredibly anxiety-inducing. The way that you set up and establish the idea of constant anxiety and waiting for something bad to happen is so interesting. I was curious about establishing that tension and working with that tension and playing with that idea of visualizing anxiety in this movie too.
AO: Well, strangely enough, I’m a post-production director. What I mean by that is I understand visual effects. Obviously, I understand editing very well. So I know then if I put a shot on something and I know then I can stretch it as long as possible and I know where to cut it to make it break that tension. But because of my background, I’ve worked closely with people who did many, many things like that. The late Jean-Marc Vallée is someone who inspires me a lot because I had a chance to work with him and to see him work.
I was a technician for so long, so I know how to shoot something. But because tension and everything happens a lot in the editing room, yes, we can create something on set. But to know how to translate that in a movie at the end, it’s always useful. You know what I mean? And this is how I play.
DC: I wanted to go back to something you said about using your experience as a father and thinking about that in Mom. So as a father, how did that influence you to make a movie about motherhood? I mean, you’re a dad, but you’re making it about a mom, so why moms instead of fathers?
AO: I was not a father when I directed this. Phil was, with two grown kids. From a writer’s perspective, he always shared that this was not about us trying to tell only a “mom’s” story. It’s a couple that is falling apart and it made more sense story-wise to stick with the mother’s point of view since she is the one that gave birth. That arc was clear. However, a lot of what happens is a consequence of the father being lost and, in many ways, a detriment to her mental health. As mentioned, we wanted to ensure that this came across as truthful (about the early days of birth) and relatable as possible, so the discussions with Phil’s wife as well as the other women – and collaborating with Emily on set – were all key to remaining as authentic as we could within this context.
But once I got my daughter, I was the in editing process, and with the editor, who also has two young kids. So my point of view shifted. He understood all the small nuances in the script and played to that.
DC: Now you get to watch it with really different eyes in the editing room. That is kind of interesting, a happy accident, if you will.
AO: Yes, exactly. It was helpful to have an editor that was able to pick up on the moments between the lines of the script. He was integral to the process.
DC: The devil’s in the details as they say. Speaking of, you use the house centipede throughout the movie. Why did you pick a house Centipede, besides the fact that they’re the most disgusting creature I’ve ever seen in my life?
AO: I wanted to explore inner demons. What makes a person no longer trust themselves? When teaming up with Philip Kalin-Hajdu, the writer who also produced with me, he expressed that he was also working on similar themes – inspired by his wife, a nurse, who was working with couples that were just about to give birth and had harrowing stories to share. That, mixed with his own experiences as a father and husband, truly informed the basis of the story.
While the story is from Meredith’s perspective, it was important to write a male character that was consistently toeing the line between helpful/loving and judgemental/misunderstanding. His micro-aggressions are taken from real stories of men who believed they were “there for their spouse” but have no idea how to actually be there. It was important to keep the story grounded, even within the supernatural. This film is just as much about support and the need for support within a family and friends, and what happens when support fails.
Categorized:Interviews
