You Are Not My Mother: The Irish Horror That Turned Family Into Folklore
In 2021, During the pandemic, when You Are Not My Mother premiered, it gave Irish filmmaker Kate Dolan his first feature film…and it was positioned at an international festival. The film breaks the silence of the strange and unsettling horror that is woven into the fabric of every loving family as one deals with the unpredictability of mental illness. The film’s combination of Celtic folklore with the intimate terror of mental illness, was so unexpected and present that it was unsettling. It was an eerily beautiful whispering wood scenario. Yet, behind the eerie lights was an even more unsettling human effort from the cast and crew of the film, mirroring, precisely, the film’s themes of identity, fear and transformation…. or loss and horror.
When Home Isn’t Safe Anymore
You Are Not My Mother was set in the Irish suburb of North Dublin, which is rather dark and moody, creating an even more oppressive atmosphere in which the audience meets Char (Hazel Doupe), who was a lonely teenager at the time, living with her emotionally distant mother, Angela (Carolyn Bracken), and her grandmother. With the first scene, Dolan’s audience is incredibly sharply reminded of the power that the emotionally detached Angela bears over the household: exhaustion, and unsettling affection. And so her mother disappears.
Angela’s return sparks a sense of unease. Angela is changed, more dynamic, lively to the point of being hyper. There is an excess of enthusiasm, overly pronounced smiling. Char picking up on the signals makes sense, and the movie turns to Irish folklore—a mother could be a changeling, a fairy replacement, and the real person has been taken.
The absence of any vivid folklore scares makes the film a masterpiece. It is more so the slow, underlying horror of wondering if your mother is a stranger. You cannot neat the loss of a parent, trauma, and mental health. Dolan so seamlessly integrates folklore with these themes, and the results are haunting for the viewer.
Hazel Doupe: A Teen Star Carrying Generations of Fear
For someone like Hazel Doupe, already celebrated for her role in Float Like a Butterfly, You Are Not My Mother was both an emotionally challenging and career defining role. At just nineteen, she had to specially keep in mind Char’s quiet resolve, and the internal strife of living in a home that is haunted, and will remain so without any ghosts.
Hazel dedicated a considerable amount of time to her reflection. As Char, she wondered how a character’s thoughts unfolded, what kind of music she listened to, and what kind of silence would be comforting. In some interviews, she expressed that her most difficult task was not to impersonate fear, but to feel and enter empathy. “Char doesn’t just think her mom is possessed,” she explained. “She thinks she is sick, and wants to help her. That is what makes it hurt more.”
Between takes, Hazel and director Kate Dolan developed a relationship she described as sisterly. Dolan gave her the freedom to introduce improvised layers of uncertainty, and to allow Char to feel a little more real. The outcome is a disturbing yet realistic account of a girl who is left to care for a mother, and is trying to survive her in the process.
Carolyn Bracken: “Becoming the Monster You Love”
If Hazel Doupe was the film’s delicate heart, Carolyn Bracken was its volatile, unpredictable pulse. Portraying Angela placed Carolyn in the extreme, first as a woman crushed against depression, and then as a being possessed with untamed, ancient energy.
Bracken’s emotional preparation for the role was said to be profound. She spoke of burnout and of family and of Angela’s tiresome chapters — “too close for comfort.” She needed to alter her physicality to perform the transformation scenes. In the first act, she was to be slow and heavy, but in the subsequent acts she was to become loose and wild increasingly to the end of the film.
Bracken’s terrifying dinner scene, where Angela laughs and her laughter segues into something primal, was mostly improvised. After the scene, she was said to have lost herself so deeply that the cast and crew remained silent, even after the camera stopped rolling. “We didn’t know if we should clap or call for help,” Dolan joked during a festival Q&A.
As comfort and praise was demanded by the crew, crew members found it odd that Bracken was the complete opposite of her on-screen persona. Each and every time Bracken was to perform a scene where she would have to be in horror, she was said to have comforted Hazel in horror scenes by saying the exact opposite and being motherly. Each and every time Bracken would perform a scene that would have her in horror she was said to comfort Hazel in horror scenes by saying the exact opposite and being motherly.
Kate Dolan’s Personal Shadows
To Kate Dolan, You Are Not My Mother was more than a debut—it was an exorcism of sorts. She grew up with Irish folklore, shadowed by the stories of changelings and the warning whispers, but she also understood the emotional burden of tending to someone where alienation struck. “It’s about that feeling when someone you love becomes unrecognizable,” she explained. “For me, folklore gave me a language for that.”
Dolan’s direction relied more on mood than exposition. She preferred filming in authentic North Dublin suburbia, striving for the uncanny to feel like a part of the everyday Irish experience. The fog, the flickering lights, the overgrown wilds—these were not the products of cinematic imagination; they were Dolan’s own growing world.
Budget constraints demand innovation. In place of complicated visual effects, Dolan and her cinematographer, Kate McCullough, exploited daylight and shadows to illustrate the ethereal quality of a supernatural being. For example, the glowing orange streetlights turned into a visual metaphor of warmth and danger. “It’s not just horror,” Dolan explained, “It’s grief painted with light.”
Horror Fans’ Obsession, the Buzz, and the Hype
When You Are Not My Mother made its first appearance at the Toronto International Film Festival, horror fans quickly sensed something special. “It’s not a jump-scare film, but it leaves you thoroughly disturbed,” said one audience member. Early promotional buzz described the film as The Babadook meets The Witch, but with a distinctly Irish soul.
Irish audiences particularly resonated with the film’s cultural roots — the integration of folklore, Catholic guilt, and working-class melancholy. This was particularly true for Dolan’s restraint in storytelling and Hazel Doupe’s performance, which garnered praise across social media. Some fans even began sharing their own family legends of changelings, turning the film into a kind of communal therapy for discussing mental illness.
The film generated significant interest for its haunting imagery and alluring sound design. Enthusiasts and critics focused on certain elements of the film and debated whether the ending confirmed Angela’s supernatural substitution or whether it was just Char’s trauma. This ambiguity became one of the film’s strongest selling points.
Although You Are Not My Mother appears emotionally weighty, the set’s atmosphere was surprisingly warm. Dolan’s team was quite small and family-like, and the shoot was scheduled for an ambitious interval of about three weeks. Long night shoots during the winter was a test of endurance for the entire cast and crew. “It was freezing,” Hazel Doupe said, “and we were supposed to act like we were terrified, but most of the time we were just shivering.”
Intimacy that stemmed from the limited budget was also appreciated. There were no large lighting rigs, just a small team of dedicated people and a few corners of light. Resourcefulness was the mainstay. The production designer used actual neighborhood houses, then subtly and lightly gothic-ified them to retain the grounded horror.