I’m a huge fan of changeling movies. I don’t entirely know why, but films like The Hole in the Ground and The Hallow just hit a horror sweet spot for me that no other subgenre can touch, so when I first heard about the trailer for You Are Not My Mother, I knew I had to check it out. It’s about a woman named Angela who goes missing and then mysteriously returns home, and when she comes back, it seems like she’s been replaced by some sort of malevolent supernatural entity.
That description alone makes me want to watch You Are Not My Mother, and when you add in the fantastic trailer, it seals the deal for me. Right from the beginning, this trailer is permeated by a sense of dread, and it doesn’t let up until the very last shot. It tells you in no uncertain terms that this movie is going to be far more than just a superficial jump scare-fest, and I’m all for it.
On top of that, this trailer also features a whole bunch of really cool horror shots that complement the atmosphere perfectly. While a lot of modern genre films try to manufacture a sense of fear artificially (often through cheap jump scares), it looks like this one is going to take a much more subtle approach. This trailer suggests that the movie is going to rely on scares that bring out the creepiness inherent in the story and let it do all the heavy lifting, and for my money, that’s the best kind of horror.
Scares like this are genuinely scary, not just startling, so I absolutely can’t wait to see this film. And thankfully, that wait isn’t going to be too long. After making its rounds on the festival circuit, You Are Not My Mother is finally coming to a wider audience via theaters and VOD on March 25, and if the trailer is any indication, it has the potential to be one of the best horror films of the year.