‘Mutter: The Diary of a Mother’ Review – A Harrowing, Subversive Creature Feature [Tribeca]
Lil’ guy cinema is back courtesy of Mutter: The Diary of a Mother, Alphan Eseli’s stunning, gut-wrenching horror parable premiering at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival. Honoring the legacy of horror classics such as Rosemary’s Baby and even It’s Alive, Eseli’s Turkish feature is a hellish descent into madness and the never-ending, inexorable limits of a mother’s love. It’s a stunning film, indicative of a singular voice using horror to grapple with longstanding stigmas and prejudices. And, luckily, it’s got an adorable monster at its core.
Gül (Hazar Ergüçlü) is panicked in the backseat of her partner’s truck as they speed down a rural road. She gives birth, and upon seeing what’s been born, her partner flees into the woods, leaving Gül all alone with their child. The baby, however, isn’t quite human, and while the official festival synopsis describes the infant as “hideous looking,” it’s really just a cute lil’ guy, albeit very much alien and monstrous with a distinct taste for raw meat and human flesh.
Mutter is hermetic and episodic, playing out over title cards such as “Birth,” “Hunger,” and “Macabre.” Socio-politically, Eseli’s fable is less interested in the why of the monstrous birth and instead uses the offspring as a metaphor for Gül’s isolation and lack of community support. Her husband has fled, she’s left alone in a dilapidated, rural cottage that stinks and rots, and the one kind figurehead in her life, the older Ecran (Güven Kiraç), really just wants her for sex. The minutiae of Gül’s life is as harrowing as the firm horror elements, calling to mind this century’s best social horror outings (see Piggy’s remarkable sense of place).
Long before the baby arrived, Gül was on her own, and she’s marginally capable despite the hegemonic pressure to shut down and give up. She nonchalantly picks at her nipple with tweezers (in a gnarly bit of body horror) after she breastfeeds her baby. Her setting is viscous and disorienting, isolated in the way Özkan Karaköse frames her remote home, as if she’d already been living in the bowels of Hell. The horror is cyclical, destined to endure long after Gül, certainly present long, long before.
Gül is on the brink, but never fully gives in, making way for the latter half’s pivot into firmer horror territory as Gül spills blood to protect not only her secret but also the child she loves despite everything. A third-act flash-forward is less finely tuned, moving arbitrarily toward a climax without the delicate pacing that preceded it, and it gives Ergüçlü considerably less to do as Eseli indulges in artistry that’s visually compelling yet narratively unclear.
Like Hanna Bergholm’s debut Hatching, or Robert Morgan’s Stopmotion, Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is a distinctly feminine horror story, a banshee scream in the night augmented by a tender, propulsive beating heart. It’s for weirdos and outsiders, and for women and mothers, anyone who feels the bludgeon of rejection in a community they’re desperate to abscond from. It’s no wonder the few other characters Gül meets all have plans of their own to leave town as soon as they can.
Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is a slow burn, which will no doubt constrain its commercial appeal outside serious genre spaces. It’s one of the most singular horror offerings in quite some time, however. Yet, Ergüçlü’s performance, alongside Tristan Bechet’s stirring yet disconsolate score, will break your heart. If you have the stomach (and the patience), the film builds to a climax guaranteed to trigger not revulsion, but profound sympathy and sorrow. Mutter: The Diary of a Mother is as horrific as it is moving, a must-see Turkish horror film fans will love no differently than Gül loves her lil’ guy.
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Mutter: The Diary of a Mother
Summary
Revulsion and maternal instincts propel Mutter: The Diary of a Mother forward, rendering it one of the year’s most striking and heartbreaking horror movies.
Categorized:Festival Coverage Reviews