THE VOICES OF OUR MOTHER – a film by Mark O’Brien – (speculative recap) ⁓

Annika Skafflin (Georgina Reilly) sits in front of a fireplace, reading. Chanting is heard outside and it evolves into the sound of heavy footsteps. The fire flares, and the door bursts open. Grabbing a rosary and a pistol, Annika shrinks against the wall in terror as something we don’t see advances on her. The gun clicks on an empty chamber, and she reaches unsuccessfully for the bullets strewn on the floor. A deep, clearly masculine voice intones: “You are mine, and no one else’s.”

The nightmare ends and Annika wakes. She remembers her grandmother Johanna (Anna Ferguson) asking for her help and handing her a piece of paper. “It’s a prayer,” says Johanna. “Your mother is going to need you.” Annika refuses, but keeps the piece of paper pinned to the wall above a small shrine in her bedroom.

At church, Johanna and her daughter Harriet (Sheila McCarthy) hear Father Roslovic (Shawn Doyle) praise forgiveness as a virtue. Evil, he insists, cannot be shunned or avoided. It must be confronted and overcome. Later, at home, Johanna prays with her daughter and warns Harriet not to leave the house alone. (Two days previously, Harriet “took a spill” when she left the house alone, sustaining a broken wrist and dislocated shoulder.) When Harriet wakes screaming, Johanna comforts her, telling her repeatedly: “You’re mine and no one else’s.”

Martin and the Twins

Next morning, Johanna has died in her sleep, and Harriet incoherently phones someone. We aren’t told who she calls, but soon all four of her children come to visit. They do so reluctantly, because when they were children, their mother sat by and watched as their father abused all of them. One suspects that the beast that cornered Annika in her nightmare is a representation of her late father.

Before going home, Annika, who is a nun, describes an incident from her childhood to Sister Angelise (Paula Boudreau): “This one day,”. she tells the older nun, “I was home alone with mother. That was uncommon. Grandma rarely left. That was when father would attack and mother would stand by. I was prepared for that. It was a regular part of all our lives. Father’s violence. But on this day it was just myself and mother. Mother was usually so stoic and quiet. Not this day. This day she was frantic, unhinged. She was trying to find grandmother’s rosary beads…she went berserk looking for them, tearing cupboards and drawers open. Father came home, saw the mess mother had made, and beat me terribly.”

Annika’s other brother William (Mark O’Brien) is married and has a gambling problem. Though he studied History, he teaches Philosophy. He tried writing fiction with no success. His fraternal twin Therese (Carolina Bartczak) owes him $15K. Her wife Lydia died of a drug overdose. His brother Martin (Alex Ozerov-Meyer) has been on hard drugs since high school.

At the hospital, Harriet is being evaluated after her reaction to Johanna’s death. Dr. Meyer (Lanette Ware) tells the family that Harriet had the symptoms of a stroke, but a CAT scan says she didn’t have one, and test show there’s nothing wrong with her physically. In fact, given her age, Harriet is healthier than one might expect. The doctor tells William: “No one can tell you what to expect, Mr. Scafflin, but right now, she’s in good health and needs familiar faces, a calm and supportive environment. Please bring her back when her mental state improves so that we can conduct further cognitive testing. Which of you will be taking her home?”

The Stone Demon

Johanna arranged for her own funeral, and as the family arrives at church for that, Harriet sees a gargoyle perched on the roof and begins to scream. She tells Father Roslovic: “It’s too late for God” and slaps him hard across the face, leaving a mark. (Perhaps the death of Johanna makes her feel free enough to do that.) Later, Harriet whispers to Therese that William had an affair with Lydia. Therese confronts her twin with this and he admits it’s true, but tries to shift the blame for his five-year affair with Lydia onto Therese. Harriet hears them arguing and screams.

Upstairs, the four of them find their mother sitting on the sill of an open window. William suggests she should go to hospital and Harriet says: “Oh, I don’t think you’d like that. I might say something that you don’t want others to know. Annika, your siblings have done awful things. They aren’t pure, like you. Daddy did bad things to his children, didn’t he? And mommy just stood by and let it happen?” She puts that as a question, although the others seem sure of it, and continues: “They put a bullet right through his head. They made it look like your daddy’s death was suicide.”

Harriet jumps from the window, suffers only a dislocated jaw from the fall, and is found standing in front of Father Roslovic’s church. After that, Harriet is confined to the basement. William and Martin board up its doorway to make sure Harriet doesn’t escape.

Annika finds some drawings made by a very young Harriet and and some of them depict the gargoyle-like creature (played by Sayla de Goede) that haunts Annika’s dreams. In one drawing, the Gargoyle is clearly depicted descending from the roof of the church.

In the film’s credits, the beast is called “transformed Harriet”. (This probably refers to a later scene in the film which, like Annika’s dream, takes place during a fire. Closed captioning credits the creature’s spoken lines to “Satan”.

Father Roslovic is called and Harriet doeesn’t mince words. She tells him: “This is my life now, not yours. Not God’s, not mother’s. She suppressed me with your almighty God, putting the real me into the recesses of my mind my entire life. But I’m growing. Look closely, father. Look closely at Satan’s child before you, free from suppression. Where is your false god now?’ Than to Annika she says: “Don’t forget, half of me is in you. My blood is your blood. You are mine and no one else’s.”

The priest leaves to “seek guidance”, but on his way out he pauses to try shifting the blame for what happened to the Skafflin family children away from Annika’s father and onto Harriet.

ROSLOVIC: “Your father. He was a good man once. He never had a chance.”
ANNIKA: “He did have a chance. And he hurt us.”
ROSLOVIC: “I wasn’t finished. He was a good man once. Annika, you understand abuse. It’s a burden that doesn’t ease even with unending faith. Your father saved me from that. He was older than me. And he became the man that I needed to look up to — the man that brought me closer to God. I know that you’ll find this difficult to believe, but he was a moral ideal for me, until he met your mother. Then your father started changing. When he stopped coming to church, he became troubled. I saw it happen, and I never did a thing.”

Later, the priest receives a letter sent by Johanna before she died, saying she knows her days are numbered and asking him to persuade Annika to take over the utterance of a prayer, the same prayer that Annika kept on the wall of her bedroom. (It seems more of a spell-casting incantation than a prayer.) The letter insists that it must be Annika who takes over the prayer saying, and one wonders what makes Annika from Harriet’s other children.

The twins decide to kill Harriet. Martin and Annika try to stop them, and a struggle in the basement over the gun that (probably) once killed their father leaves Annika the only survivor. She tucks the pistol into her waistband and climbs the stairs. The house is in flames, just like in her nightmare. She runs into the priest who tries to persuade her to “save” Harriet by saying Johanna’s prayer, then the fire swallows him. She sees The Gargoyle approaching, puts down the gun and says the prayer. The Gargoyle vanishes, and Annika carries her unconscious mother out of the fire. “You’re mine and no one else’s”, she repeats, over and over.

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The Director’s Thoughts

Writer/director Mark O’Brien commented on the film’s supernatural aspect to Kelly Marchman McNeely of Horror Fuel. “Everyone in the movie is so much concerned with themselves,”, he explained. “is it even really happening? Or is it just their own narcissistic tendencies projected onto something?” And he told Pat King of Rue Morgue: “There are a lot of things left open for one to interpret, but I do feel like Annika’s character is really trying to rise above facing something awful or something evil, and being able to find sympathy or forgiveness within that. And to me, it’s not always the right thing.”

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THE VOICES OF OUR MOTHER can be streamed on AMC+ in the US, and on SHUDDER in Canada and the UK.