Mom

Having just delivered her baby, a woman is suddenly overwhelmed by the complications that arise in trying to care for her newborn infant while maintaining a semblance of her normal life before the pregnancy, only for it all to be corrupted by an outside force against her.

This was a fairly solid if formulaic psychological horror effort. The fact that it plays as well as it does with the new mother syndrome and how she has to get acclimated to the pressures of caring for a newborn baby, from the unnatural sleeping conditions, coordinated treatment and protection to keep it safe and healthy, and the constant stress of doing it without help from her husband or others that leaves her feeling as drained and frazzled as she gets whether it's the forgetful nature of what used to be simple tasks or the belief that what she's doing is harming her baby, the toll it takes to where she can't enjoy her life or her marriage anymore without feeling like everything she does is wrong makes for an engaging enough time here, especially when mixed with the secondary story about her being tormented by the spirit of her dead son which helps add immensely to the unease depicted. Granted, the main issue here is this similar storyline appearing in the entirety of the genre fare that utilizes this concept. None of the scenes here are all that new or original, from failing to get it to stop crying, the belief that the food she gives him is too hot or too cold, accidentally scalding him in the bath, or being distracted to the point of nearly setting something important on fire that could burn the house down. All of these elements run out once again, and it feels more like a checklist of scenes and tropes trying to make something feel more impactful than it really is. No matter how well it develops a sense of her damaged psyche or how she manages to bring her dead son's spirit back to haunt her, this can't help feeling routine in the end so everything is a bit slapped together which can make for a sluggish and overlong feeling here. None of it is truly detrimental but it does slow this down overall.

Rated Unrated/R: Violence and Language.

A young mother's post partum depression mutates into full blown psychosis, with horrifying results. But why did her therapist not insist that she be hospitalized in time? That question haunts the film the further she descends into delusion, and it's not clear if the omission was deliberate or a casualty of negligent filmmaking. There's also an apparent supernatural presence, though the film is scarier if it's written off as a hallucination.