Movies
‘Matriarch’ Review – Hulu’s Ambitious Folk Horror Movie Explores Diseased Family Roots
Home is where the horror is in Matriarch, Hulu’s latest Huluween offering. Writer/Director Ben Steiner expands on his 2018 short film “Urn,” also available on Hulu, for his feature debut. A strange illness forces a woman to return home to her roots, leading her down a bizarre journey of self-discovery and twisted folk horror. Matriarch bites off a bit more than it can chew with its narrative, but its striking horror imagery sticks with you.
Laura (Jemima Rooper) lives in the city and works in a high-anxiety job as an executive. She struggles to maintain relationships and uses cocaine to cope with her stress. A strange illness and an overdose leave her spiraling in a life-upending way, prompting Laura to accept the invitation of her estranged mother, Celia (Kate Dickie), to return home. But homecoming is anything but healing for Laura. There’s something amiss with the town; the neighbors behave strangely and are sometimes unwelcoming. None of it holds a candle to the increasingly strained and toxic relationship between mother and daughter.
Matriarch introduces its protagonist as a complete mess of an adult, using her present to set up the overarching mystery of her past. More specifically, to raise questions about her estrangement and if her strange, black liquid-oozing illness might be hereditary. Steiner prolongs the answers to these questions as Laura travels home to the rural countryside where a Wicker Man-like folk horror vibe awaits.
Despite a weird conspiracy emerging from the strange happenings and bizarre encounters, Laura doesn’t seem to hurry for answers, either. All of it centers around the volatile estrangement with Celia. Steiner toggles between an ominous supernatural threat and reopening psychological scars from lousy parenting, tossing red herrings or haphazard distractions into the mix to prolong the inevitable. Subplots of former flames or forgotten neighborly grudges add to Laura’s emotionally complex journey home, but most of this fizzles without any clear purpose.
While the plot details can be as murky as the town’s muddy marshes, the atmosphere and horror imagery prove far more effective and concise. A slow folk horror build eventually leads to unexpected and bold body horror. Steiner packs the third act full of gruesome horror, foreboding Pagan acts, and shocking surprises that almost make the wait worth it. Almost.
The visual spectacle of the climax might make the payoff worth the wait for some, but there’s an empty quality to it all. Steiner puts more emphasis on mood and atmosphere, tossing too many elements into Laura’s journey without any satisfying resolutions to most of the ideas introduced. There’s also a disconnect in the abrupt shift from quiet, unsettling folk horror to over-the-top body horror in the finale.
Steiner’s debut is full of ideas and delivers unforgettable moments of horror, but it’s perhaps a bit too ambitious. Dickie and Rooper are fantastic; Dickie’s Celia is a menacing force of nature. But we’re no closer to understanding Laura or her childhood by the story’s end, and, save for the horror, we’re not entirely invested either.
Matriarch is available to stream exclusively on Hulu now.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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