‘Matriarch’ Cast and Director Talk ‘Alienation’ and ‘Generational Trauma’ in Hulu’s New Body Horror Movie (Exclusive)

Hulu has launched a number of new Halloween movies and specials this year, and the newest project from the streamer is Matriarch. The film, as explained by lead star Jemima Rooper, “is essentially about a woman, Laura, who is lost and disassociated from her life and has some problems.” She “ends up sort of with nowhere else to turn going back home to the place and the person that caused this,” who is her mother, Celia, played by Kate Dickie (Game of Thrones, The Witch).

Rooper, who portrays Laura, sat down for an exclusive interview with PopCulture.com, alongside Dickie and Matriarch writer/director Ben Steiner, who shared their perspectives on the film. At the beginning of the conversation, Steiner confirmed that the film does have some hints of possession horror, “because there’s an alienation from your own body that those two things have in common.” We also asked Dickie her thoughts on the film’s exploration of mother-daughter relationships, and she had some very insightful thoughts to share. “There’s so many layers to Matriarch and there is exactly that generational trauma and things from the past coming back to affect our behavior today,” she said.

Dickie continued, “A lot of other layers of different things going on with Celia as well, which doesn’t make her the best mother in town, let’s put it that way. And what’s lovely about Matriarch, as well, is all the kind of wild storyline at the heart is this relationship between the mother and daughter that hasn’t worked and isn’t working and Laura is left very much needing a lot more from Celia than what I give her or, certainly, a lot more different things than what I give her. It’s a really interesting kind of intricate storyline really. And a lot of layers.”

Finally, Rooper shared her thoughts on the notion that Laura perpetually finds herself without any real support, saying, “I absolutely felt that, which is what I sort of loved about it when I read it because it’s what happens to Laura, how we find her in the beginning is very extreme, but it’s something that I relate to in my life.” She added, “There are times when all of us, when our lives aren’t working the way we want, and she’s in a sort of pretty desperate place and she doesn’t fit in and she’s never fit in.”

The actress continued, “And you’ve sort of discovered that when she goes home you can see she’s left somewhere because she didn’t fit in there. But she hasn’t got anywhere else to go. So she ends up revisiting that and then revisiting the traumas that she had there. And the whole film is really about that and about her finding herself.” Matriarch is now streaming, only on Hulu.