They say no love is stronger than a mother’s for her child. While this bond can create great things and nurture a child to be a better person, the opposite can also be true, and a mother’s love can be misguided, awkward, or downright malicious. Cinema has also been an ideal place to explore these awkward relationships, with movies like 1981’s Mommie Dearest becoming synonymous with broken family relationships under a misguided matriarch. Yet, when it comes to mother-son relationships, things can get a bit messy (just ask the Greek gods), and these tales of exaggerated or frighteningly realistic family connections can make for some unsettling and uncomfortable films.
These films deal with some uncomfortable subject matter, but all approach it with a degree of artistic merit or notable shock value to make them powerful watches despite the content. We will count down to what we think is the best movie exploring the dysfunctional relationship between a mother and son, committed to film in movies. You can also choose to enjoy without delving deep into the psychology of what is happening.
17
‘His Mother’s House’ (1974)
Peter, a young man reeling from a breakup and academic burnout, returns to his childhood home in rural Norway in search of a reset. His mother, recently widowed and living alone in a creaky old house, welcomes him back with the kind of warmth that feels off. The quiet reunion turns into something suffocating. She hovers, she clings, she manipulates. Peter tries to move forward by meeting someone new, but his mother’s grip won’t let him go.
Directed by Per Blom, His Mother’s House is a slow-burning Norwegian drama that’s all about atmosphere and unease. The house itself feels claustrophobic, quiet, and loaded with tension. Bente Børsum’s performance as the mother is chilling in its subtlety. She isn’t loud, and she doesn’t yell, but she’s always there. And Svein Sturla Hungnes nails that trapped, twitchy energy of a man unraveling in real time.
16
‘The Strangler’ (1964)
Leo Kroll is a mild-mannered lab technician with a secret. He’s been strangling young women across Boston and leaving the police baffled. But the real horror isn’t the killings. It’s in Leo’s relationship with his bedridden mother. She is domineering, emotionally manipulative, and constantly belittling him, treating him like a child while demanding his complete devotion. As the investigation deepens, Leo’s psychological state is traced back to his toxic maternal bond.
The Strangler is a gritty, low-budget movie with that grimy, black-and-white ‘60s thriller vibe. Victor Buono plays Leo with this eerie stillness. He’s not a monster, but a man who has never had a shot. The scenes with his mother are a real horror show. She infantilizes him, mocks him, and then begs him not to leave her. It’s textbook entrapment, and it’s brutal to watch. The movie, underrated, has aged into a cult favorite for fans who like their thrillers with a side of psychological rot.
15
‘The Baby’ (1973)
A social worker gets one of the most bizarre cases of her career when she is introduced to the Wadsworth family. Housing a home where drugs and partying are commonplace, a matriarch and her daughters watch over their youngest brother, whom they only refer to as ‘Baby.’ Baby is an adult man still trapped inside the mind of a baby and treated as such, yet his cruel mother and siblings are also quick to dish out torture to the infantile man. The social worker takes it upon herself to save Baby, who she believes may have been conditioned to act that way.
There is a certain degree of camp in this famous exploitation film that makes it hard to put any further down this list. Yet, its bizarre premise makes it undeniably one of the most memorable portrayals of a messed-up mother-son relationship. Ted Post’s bizarre feature is not for the faint-hearted, and while there is little that happens here that is graphic, it is incredibly uncomfortable to watch a man act like a baby while his ‘mother’ whips him. The ending is equally bizarre, making this more of a curiosity than a classic.
14
‘Throw Momma From the Train’ (1987)
For a more lighthearted look at a terrible mother/son relationship, you can’t do better than 1987’s Throw Momma From the Train. Larry Donner (Billy Crystal) can’t get over his ex-wife’s betrayal (she took credit for a manuscript he wrote) and is teaching a writing class when a student approaches him, Owen Lift (Danny DeVito), who lives with his wretched mother (Anne Ramsey). Inspired by the movie Strangers on a Train, the two decide to make a deal to “take care of” each other’s problem.
Directed and produced by Danny Devito, Throw Momma From the Train earned Anne Ramsey an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. The performance became influential, inspiring many a ‘mean old woman’ going forward, and her overbearing and cruel attitude toward her son was comedic gold. Overall, the movie is a delightful comedic romp and an excellent love letter to Alfred Hitchcock, taking inspiration from his film Strangers on a Train and giving it a dark, comedic twist.
13
‘The Grifters’ (1990)
Anjelica Huston and John Cusack play Lilly and Roy Dillon, mother and son con artists. Lilly is a bleached blond, hardened professional who works for a mob bookie named Bobo and hasn’t seen her son in years. When she drops in for a visit, she finds him internally bleeding after a scam gone wrong. She’s disappointed with his inferior scamming skills and with his girlfriend Myra (Annette Bening), whom Roy is unaware is also a con woman. Lilly wants Roy to get out of the game altogether, while Myra wants him to go in with her on a long con, and obviously, something has to give.
Director Stephen Frears amps up the dark angle of this 1990 thriller with Lilly resorting to murder, trying to rob her son, and attempting to seduce him to get away with it all. Huston was initially reluctant to play the role of this vicious mother, and it’s easy to see why. Still, there is a wicked wit to The Grifters, backed by a sleek noir aesthetic that makes it highly engaging despite its troubling premise around a distorted mother/son relationship.
12
‘Ma Mére’ (2004)
Directed by Christophe Honoré and released in 2004, it’s based on a posthumously published erotic novel by Georges Bataille, a controversial figure who wrote in excess on sex and violence. The film is the story of Hélène, mother to 17-year-old Pierre (Louis Garrel, already known by this point for starring in Bertolucci’s The Dreamers), and a recent widow. Hélène uses the death of her husband to introduce her son to a world of depravity.
French art house darling Isabelle Huppert is known for pushing boundaries in her films, and her role as Hélène in Ma Mére is no exception. From the outset, her character is sexually inappropriate towards her son, telling him in detail about past promiscuity before involving him in an orgy with her friends. This is just the beginning of Pierre’s obsessive downfall under the guidance of his mother. The movie was hit with an NC-17 rating in the US, although an R-rated version is available.
11
‘Hush’ (1998)
Martha (Jessica Lange) dotes excessively on her son, Jackson (Jonathan Schaech), although his girlfriend Helen (Gwyneth Paltrow) finds it more than a little stifling. Soon after they visit Martha’s home, Helen realizes she’s pregnant, and she and Jackson marry, with Jackson’s paternal grandmother insinuating that Martha is not to be trusted. Despite Helen’s wishes, the couple moves in with Martha. It soon becomes apparent that family secrets from the past regarding Jackson’s deceased father are not what they seem and that Martha’s goal is to keep Jackson and the baby for herself.
Jessica Lange is the real star of Hush. Even though the film received a mixed reception, almost unanimously, the actor gave a career-defining performance as the plotting mother-in-law. The way the film explores the awkward family dynamic between the three leads to some uncomfortable moments, with the movie delivering a thrilling premise, albeit with a bit of cliché and predictability that keeps it from being a true standout of the psychological thriller genre.
10
‘The Babadook’ (2014)
Amelia and her son Samuel are struggling. Amelia, with the past and the death of her husband, leaves her to raise a child alone, and Samuel is acting out. Things are made worse when Samuel becomes convinced that a creature from a book, Mister Babadook, is trying to kill him and his mom, making him lash out violently. As Amelia starts to experience strange occurrences around the home, she becomes increasingly paranoid and lashes out, often at Samuel.
There is a degree of empathy for Amelia as a mother, even as she turns delusional and struggles to remain civil with her son. Both seem to have gotten a bad shake in life and are struggling to find a sense of normalcy. Still, this does not make the relationship any less toxic, as Samuel’s outbursts are made worse by Amelia acting back in kind; seeing them interact can be very uncomfortable. Still, as a slow-burn horror film, The Babadook is pure perfection.
9
‘Ready or Not’ (2019)
Former foster child Grace (Samara Weaving) seems to have lucked out with the well-heeled family of her husband-to-be Alex (Mark O’Brien), although she wonders why he’s been a little scant with the details of their estrangement. Upon meeting them on her wedding day, they appear to be a highly dysfunctional family, headed by matriarch Becky (an icy Andie MacDowell). Grace figures she can survive the family tradition that Alex’s father Tony brings up, involving a puzzle box and the drawing of a card.
Unfortunately, Alex doesn’t explain to her until after she’s drawn the Hide and Seek card that the family tradition is now for his family to hunt her down and kill her or risk death themselves. What follows is a violent, nightmarish night during which there are moments when both Alex and his brother Daniel (Adam Brody) try to help Grace escape. Still, Becky has none of it, and she is determined to protect her sons from the family curse by killing her daughter-in-law in this comedy horror from 2019.
8
‘A Christmas Tale’ (2008)
Catherine Deneuve stars in this 2008 dysfunctional family drama as the glamorous matriarch of the Vuillard family, Junon, who is welcoming her children and their families home for Christmas. She and her husband Abel are dealing with the news that she has leukemia, which is a particularly fraught diagnosis for the family. There were originally two children born to Junon and Abel: Elizabeth and Joseph. When Joseph was a child, he was diagnosed with leukemia, and his parents conceived another son in a desperate bid for a bone marrow match.
Henri (Mathieu Amalric) has always known of his provenance and his failure to save his brother. He reacted by becoming the black sheep of the family, generally delighting in stirring up emotions the rest of the family would rather leave buried. It’s a beautiful film about a noisily dysfunctional family, and Deneuve and Amalric are at the top of their game as a battle-scarred mother and son with good reasons for distrust.
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
