Mother, May I?: Sons and Mothers and Fiancées, Oh My

Emmett wants to clean and flip his recently deceased mother’s house: get in, get out, and avoid any trauma still lingering from when she abandoned him as a young child. Anya, his fiancé, see’s this as an opportunity to finally force Emmett to deal with his trauma because she believes it is preventing him from being the partner she needs. So she convinces him to take mushrooms to get him to let go. But something strange happens while they’re tripping: she starts behaving like his mother. The next morning he wakes up sober, but she still won’t drop the act… Anya loves playing games — is this her taking it too far? Or did his mother’s spirit somehow possess her?

REVIEW:

Mother, May I? is a nice peace of old style psychological terror that revolves around a son, Emmett (Kyle Gallner) grieving for a connection to his mother and answers as to why she abandoned him. She’s barely seen in physical form outside a bug soaked corpse lying on the floor, mind shadows and a large black and white salon size photo of her in a dramatic ballet pose, that shows only one side of her face and body. She’s beautiful, at least her younger self was. That beauty and her poise can be seen from every part of the house that the son has inherited, and now temporarily occupies along with his fiancée, Anya (Holland Roden).

Emmett and Anya, whose mother is a psychotherapist, have a strange ritual based on psychological role play therapy, where they would face each other across a table and question each other in very intimate ways, with total honesty expected in the replies. They would switch playing perceived versions of themselves. It will start with each playing themselves, then each other in turns until an hour was up. It can get creepy and intense, but it’s essentially Mother, May I? version of a séance. After a psychedelic mushroom trip, the next chair therapy turns into a possession with Anya becoming Emmett’s mother, and staying that way

to Emmett’s terror and delight for a few days.

Emmett finds out about his mother that he knew briefly until her perceived abandonment of him. She smoked, cooked, had a diva personality- entitled, rude, honest- a loving and doting mother when he suited her purposes, cruel and indifferent when he did not. She was psychologically fragile and eventually turned mad and a threat to her child, with social services eventually taking the boy away from her for his own safety.

When Anya switches back to her real personality, Emmett attitude towards her has changed. He’s indifferent, withdrawn and treats her with slight disgust when she tries to be intimate. The key thing to remember is that Anya can’t swim and that the house has a fairly large pond behind it and that Emmett likes to canoe it. Cue thriller.

Mother, May I? is a deep dive into the corner of mother and sons and the rivalry that creates with their girlfriends and fiancée’s. It sniffs ambiguously into the dark cellars of men’s minds where the complicated feelings about their mothers are locked up, that is until they break out and play havoc with their romantic relationships.

The director, Laurence Vanicelli, pulls out all the old style ploys to create the most creepy uncertainty possible: subtle zooms, long held long distance shots, positioning actors so that they’re looking straight into the camera. It’s all done with highly efficient technique and style. And some great acting from Gallner and Roden. The two play off each other so well. Everything doesn’t always work, but it’s always interesting to watch.