Why Horror is the Most Honest Genre About Motherhood

When we are little girls, playing with dolls, dreaming of being mothers, we ignore the hard parts. We know they exist. Of course we do. We see it in our own mothers. The dark circles, the outbursts, the tears the exhaustion, the bleeding, the births. We have no way to conceptualize these things. We have no context. And so we rock the baby dolls, sing them a lullaby, and tuck them into their cribs.

When we are older, when we become mothers ourselves, we learn how amazing, transformative and beautiful being a mother can be. But again, there is the other side and we can never escape the other side. The dark circles, the outbursts, the exhaustion, the tears, the blood, the births. From a young age, we are trained to imagine the beauty of motherhood long before we have the ability to understand its darkness.

The scariest horror isn’t the killer in the woods or the monster under the bed. Those things are supposed to be scary. The scariest horror is made of someone who is supposed to be fundamentally good inside. Someone who loves unconditionally. Someone who nurtures and cares for others. Someone you never expect to be frightening. But we are. We all are in our own way. We bleed every month, we hold power maidens and men can’t possibly understand, we create life inside our bodies, we bring that life forth in blood and water. We scream, we moan, we writhe and you can’t always tell the difference between a woman in ecstasy and a woman in agony.

When it comes to the horror genre, we don’t have to dig deep or suspend much belief with motherhood. The elements are all right there, we just have to scratch the surface of our daily lives and there it is.

Blood.

Transformation.

Loss of self.

Love so powerful it becomes terrifying.

The possibility of creation. The possibility of destruction.

Horror has always understood what motherhood asks of women. It is not an intrusion into the genre.

It is one of its most natural monsters.