Editorials
Bad Parenting: Horror’s Top 10 Killer Parents!
It’s been a week since horror comedy Mom and Dad released on VOD and select theaters, and with it another delightfully bonkers performance by Nicolas Cage. While it’s Cage and Selma Blair’s performances as homicidal parents that really makes Brian Taylor’s latest worth the watch, it also brought the realization that there are very few horror films to feature murderous mothers and fathers. I can think of tons of horror films that pit lethal children against their parents, but not so much of the reverse. It makes sense, given that it’s considered a taboo to kill a child onscreen, and that often this subgenre of horror is used to explore the fears of being a parent. But when horror explores the frustration that comes with dealing with rearing an unruly child? That usually equates to some magic on screen, as mom and dad unleash their inner rage toward their offspring. In honor of those moms and dads that sometimes need a break from their kids, here are horror’s 10 most pushed-to-the-edge, homicidal parents:
Mommy and Daddy – The People Under the Stairs
Fool (Brandon Adams) uncovers one of the most warped families in horror when he decides to break in and steal from the landlords evicting his family from their apartment. Referring to themselves as Mommy and Daddy (Wendy Robie and Everett McGill), the Robeson’s really, really love the idea of family. There’s just one problem; their child needs to be absolutely perfect. Which is why they’ve got a basement full of discarded, imperfect children, each one missing ears, tongues, and parts for violating Mommy and Daddy’s speak no evil, hear no evil, and see no evil rules. Those kids are forced to then turn to cannibalism to survive. The longer Fool spends in the house, the more twisted Mommy and Daddy become; it turns out they’re incestuous sibling lovers! Mommy and Daddy became absolutely unhinged when Fool tried taking their new daughter Alice away, but let’s be real. They were crazy from the start.
Marie and Alan Russell – Oculus
Mike Flanagan’s horror film about an antique mirror that caused death and bad luck to any that possessed it was full of psychological mind games, courtesy of said mirror. But the film was at its most intense during the past, set 11 years prior to the film’s present, where 10-year-old Tim and his 12-year-old sister Kaylie watched their parents slowly descend into homicidal psychosis under the mirror’s sway. Mom Marie turns first, first ceasing to take care or feed her kids then attempting to murder them until dad Alan intervenes. But it doesn’t take long for Alan to want to kill his kids either. The scariest is when they discover mom chained to a wall like an animal, only to find she’s broken her teeth and reduced to her most primitive, predatory instincts. Of all of the mirror’s tricks, the scariest was turning Kaylie and Tim’s parents into murderous shells of their former selves.
Jerry Blake/Henry Morrison/Bill Hodgkins – The Stepfather
The chilling opening in which actor Terry O’Quinn’s character washes blood off himself before altering his appearance sets the tone and the character’s MO; the titular stepfather seeks out single mothers to marry in search of the perfect, ready-made family. When that new family is revealed to be less than ideal or perfect, he cuts and run. Literally. I’m sure his psychotic nature has a little something to do with it, too. Operating under the alias Jerry Blake, he marries widow Susan Maine and spends a lot of time trying to bond with skeptical teen daughter Stephanie, murdering anyone that gets in his way. But the more Stephanie behaves like a normal teen, the more irked Jerry becomes until his homicidal nature gives way to an explosive showdown.
Jack Torrance – The Shining
Before the ghosts of the isolated Overlook Hotel deteriorated Jack’s mind and fueled his rage toward his wife Wendy and son Danny, he wasn’t exactly father of the year material. A severe temper and alcoholism, characteristics Jack picked up from his own father, eventually gave way to a burst of rage where he broke Danny’s arm. Which means that Wendy gets a little side-eye too for staying with him. Nonetheless, with the trio stuck together for the duration of winter Jack’s temper rears its nasty head, and his growing hatred for Wendy and Jack crescendos into a relentless homicidal pursuit. If it weren’t for the freezing blizzard and Danny’s shining ability, Jack may have very well succeeded in murdering his family. The restless evil in the hotel did everything they could to assist.
Mom – Baby Blues
Set in the ‘80s and based on the 2001 harrowing case of Andrea Yates, this horror film is unflinching and dark. Though not particularly gory (well, mostly), it’s not for the faint of heart as the film is unafraid to show the slaughter of the children. Mom (Colleen Porch) suffers a psychotic break by way of postpartum depression instigated by her husband hitting the road once again on truck driving duty, leaving her alone with her four kids. Horrifying, tense, and heartbreaking, writer/co-director Lars Jacobson takes the bold approach by delivering a straight-forward horror devoid of humor with a very delicate subject matter.
Don – 28 Weeks Later
Though most of the film is set 28 weeks after the outbreak of the first film, the opening established Robert Carlyle’s Don as selfish coward during the initial outbreak, where he leaves his wife for dead when the infected break into the house they’ve been barricaded in. Once the infected begin to die off from starvation, widower Don is reunited with his children in a military safe zone. Don is downright shocked when his children discover their mother to still be alive. It turns out she’s an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, but it’s not something that occurs to Don when he kisses her in a guilt-stricken apology. Now infected, Don goes on a violent rampage, slaughtering anyone in his path, but it’s his children that he wants to destroy the most; pursuing them nonstop as they flee the re-infected city.
Margaret White – Carrie
Poor Carrie White. From the moment you meet her mother, you can’t help but understand and sympathize with the awkward teen. Margaret White (Piper Laurie) is a bit unhinged from the beginning, a religious zealot so strong in her fervor that her treatment and punishments of Carrie are flat out child abuse. Margaret was understandably pushed to madness thanks to a drunken husband that raped her, an act in which Carrie was conceived, but she’s held it against her daughter ever since. Though Carrie finally learns to stand up for herself, Margaret’s smiling face as she stabs her daughter is bone-chilling.
Kent McCoy – Clown
In Kent’s defense, his slaughter of children doesn’t come from mental anguish but from demonic forces. He’s a loving husband and father that just happens to don a clown resembling skin of a European demon for the sake of entertaining at his son’s birthday party. As the demon takes root, Kent directs his new-found hunger for children toward his son’s bullies. And that’s only after suicide failed. Alas, the demon slowly takes over, and the bodies begin piling up, and Kent’s son Jack becomes the most enticing thing on the menu. When it comes to demonic possession, a father’s love isn’t always enough.
Nick and Lily Laemle – Parents
Only child Michael is a strange boy that often dreams of massive pools of blood. Growing up in 1954 suburbia, his parents are the picture-perfect couple. With dad bringing home the meat, and mom cooking meals that would make Betty Crocker proud, they’re a little upset Michael refuses to eat meat. That’s probably because Michael discovers that the meat dad brings home is human meat, and his parents are cannibals. Nick just wants Michael to be a chip off the ol’ block, resorting to assertive measures to get Michael to participate in the family diet. When Michael is rebellious, well, dad doesn’t take it very well. If your kid refuses to eat people, I guess you can always start over and make another?
Grace Stewart – The Others
This World War II set supernatural thriller introduces us to Nicole Kidman’s Grace as an overbearing mom from the get-go. Living with her two children in a remote country house while her husband is away at war, she keeps the kids locked inside due to their uncommon sensitivity to sunlight. Shortly after hiring help, strange occurrences begin to take place. As they grow, she can’t tell if she’s cracking under the pressure of raising her kids alone or if her house is haunted. She even starts attacking her own children when mistaking them for strangers. Enter one of horror’s biggest twists (obvious spoiler ahead) – Grace and her children aren’t among the living, but ghosts haunting the new inhabitants of Grace’s home. Depressed and isolated, Grace snapped and murdered her children before ending her own life. Where most homicidal parents in horror fail, Grace succeeded. We just didn’t know it yet.
I first heard about The Mandela Catalogue through a couple of nephews who were obsessed with the ARG’s sinister mythology. It was only after watching Wendigoon’s in-depth analysis of the series that I realized just how deep this rabbit hole goes.
In fact, I’d already been exposed to the nightmarish visuals of Alex Kister’s YouTube creation for years at that point without even realizing that it was the origin of several viral “cursed images” and spooky memes that had leaked into the wider internet – with this viral element actually being a part of the Catalogue’s overarching narrative.
Flash-forward to 2026 and the unprecedented success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has led to Hollywood betting on horrific internet properties with existing fanbases, which means that Kister’s unique hybrid of both religious and analog horror is finally headed to the big screen with a script written by Kister himself alongside Tyler Clifton.
While this news shouldn’t be too surprising if you’ve been keeping up with the ongoing success of The Mandela Catalogue (both myself and Wendigoon having previously predicted that the series would inevitably make the jump to theaters one day), plenty of horror fans are likely confused as to why so many folks are excited for what appears to be a Hollywood adaptation of a series of creepy .jpeg images under a VHS filter.
With that in mind, today I’d like to invite fellow readers to accompany me as I explore the origins of Alex Kister’s viral hit and attempt to explain exactly why we should all be excited about the Mandela Catalogue adaptation!
From High School Writing Project to Internet Horror Phenomenon
The first seeds of The Mandela Catalogue were sown when Kister was still in high school and developed a writing project subverting religious tropes in a world where biblical history had been altered by demonic forces. A little while later, Kister came across an analog horror contest on Reddit and decided to adapt his ideas into a standalone video where he would edit a religious kids’ cartoon –The Beginner’s Bible: The Nativity, to be specific- into something far creepier. This is how the iconic Overthrone video was born, with this viral short film taking on a life of its own as fans demanded more eerie content from Kister.
Though the video was originally meant to be a one-and-done sort of affair, with Kister actually regretting some of its primitive visuals and considering the editing amateurish and “YouTube-Poop-like” when compared to his current standards, fan reaction and free time during the COVID-19 pandemic encouraged the (then) seventeen-year-old filmmaker to continue producing content set in this same world. The Mandela Catalogue name was inspired by the Mandela Effect conspiracy theory, as the series would slowly begin to explore the subtle horror of alternate histories.
Inspired by existential dread brought on by extended periods of quarantine as well as a personal crisis of faith, Kister continued to expand his alternate timeline where the rise of Christianity had been prevented by what was presumably the Devil disguised as the Archangel Gabriel. This alternate course of fictional events led to the existence of certain paranormal anomalies that had come to be accepted as “normal” by the 1990s, which is why most of the series’ supernatural horror is presented in such a matter-of-fact manner.
Most of this background information and religious lore is delivered by increasingly cryptic broadcasts and in-universe PSAs, as well as the occasional found footage video, that often have to be decoded by clever viewers. Of course, it’s the consistently disturbing imagery that made the series so popular – much of which was originally created by Kister on a smartphone!
The Alternates: Horror’s Most Unsettling Modern Monsters
The show’s early episodes mostly take place within the fictional Mandela County in Wisconsin and depict life in a world where demonic entities are capable of using media to enter our reality. This process usually involves scaring victims into killing themselves and then repurposing their bodies as horrific doppelgangers referred to as “Alternates”. This terrifying phenomenon has become so common that local police already have specialized procedures in place to deal with the issue, though this usually consists of simply ignoring calls for help so as to avoid spreading so-called “Metaphysical Awareness Disorder” any further.
Over time, Kister would expand this mythology and incorporate different kinds of Alternates into the mix, though the story never stopped deconstructing religious concepts. The series’ second volume exponentially increased both video quality and the overall narrative scope as we began to follow the lives of characters who had already grown up in this dystopian hellscape where the government is forced to prohibit religion, television, and even mirrors in the hopes of mitigating the damage done by the ongoing invasion of otherworldly entities.
The really interesting part comes into play when you realize exactly how the Alternates make use of scary media in order to spread their demonic influence, with the analog horror of it all being a diegetic part of the story and something of a memetic trap orchestrated by the false Gabriel.
I particularly appreciate how some characters begin to suspect that there’s something wrong with their version of reality and that things weren’t meant to play out this way, especially when Mark utters the haunting line “who have I been praying to all this time?” That’s why I think The Mandela Catalogue is an effective piece of religious horror even if you don’t subscribe to the Christian worldview, as the mere idea of a world where evil has already won is a universally terrifying concept in and of itself. Not only that, but the series’ uncanny analog imagery alone is already worth the price of admission, as you’ve likely already noticed by looking at the pictures accompanying this article.
Why The Feature Adaptation Could Be Horror’s Next Big Success
It’s actually been a whole year since Kister first announced that he had been working on a feature-length screenplay for a Mandela Catalogue movie since 2022, with his proposed story following an ensemble of high-school graduates who uncover a supernatural conspiracy after the mysterious disappearance of a fellow student. This premise sounds similar to narrative elements present in the series’ second volume, but I’m pretty sure that Kister is going to go the Kane Parsons route and make the movie more of a spin-off than a re-imagining of its source material.
While notable Hollywood producers like Aaron B. Koontz, Scott Stuber, and Steven Spielberg himself are backing the upcoming project, I feel like there’s no one better to adapt this deeply personal exploration of faith and the dark side of communication than the person who first came up with it. That’s why I can’t wait to see Kister’s work on the big screen, as I have a feeling that this young filmmaker is the next one on the list about to make cinematic history – especially since this is clearly a passion project that has been in the works for years at this point!
That being said, there’s always a chance that the film could end up unleashing a fresh wave of Alternate incursions, but I guess that’s just a risk we’ll have to take.
You must be logged in to post a comment.