Mother’s Instinct

The Plot: It’s the 1960s and while the Space Race is gaining pace, life continues on as normal in the suburbs. Alice (Jessica Chastain) dotes on her young son as much as her next door neighbour Celine (Anne Hathaway). They’ve been the best of neighbours and pals… until now. Alice witnesses Celine’s son plunge to his untimely demise in an accident. Stricken by grief, Celine becomes a shadow of her former self. This does not go unnoticed by Alice, with Celine taking a more active interest in Alice’s son. Alice soon comes to suspect that there’s more to Celine’s erratic behaviour…

The Verdict: It might be just as well that Mothers’ Instinct is an American remake of a Franco-Belgian film from 2018 that hasn’t been seen on these shores. With no frame of reference going in, one can only imagine afterwards that the original had some modicum of sensibility to it. The 2024 Mothers’ Instinct has ostensibly all the trappings of a sleek Hitchcockian domestic thriller, fronted by two A-list actors who have been in the same two films previously but not shared scenes together. It has the period setting down to a T, relating 1960s neighbourly values of looking out for each other across the picket fences and a mother’s undying love for her child. It gradually cranks up its plot and plays out its hand when the time comes. Given all that potential for some nervy is-she-isn’t-she momentum, why then does Mothers’ Instinct simply not work?

The answer is fairly obvious early on. The script by Sarah Conradt, based on the book by Barbara Abel, doesn’t have the confidence to pull off its high-wire act in a convincing manner. It frequently wobbles as much as its female characters, who are portrayed as mentally unstable mothers and one freak-out away from being committed by their bland husbands who pay little attention to them. Women are smarter and more capable as mothers than this. This film is doing a further disservice to Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway, both highly talented actors who can burrow into a character and pull out genuine depth and emotion with ease. Here, they both struggle with a script that feels as if it had been written by artificial intelligence given that a lot of the plot machinations are well signposted and lack any real surprise. There’s a gradual drip-feed of unlikely plot turns that soon snowball into a string of unintentionally funny ‘ah, here now’ moments that really strain credibility and audience patience.

At some stage, first-time director Benoît Delhomme must have had an idea to make an interesting film about mothers and the lengths they’ll go to protect their children. This is also while suggesting that bad neighbours make bad friends too. All it takes is one suspicious look for an idea to form about what might actually be going on. The execution is just too overwrought though, barrelling through events with no character development or lessons being learned. Alice has strong suspicions about Celine’s behaviour and there’s already bad blood flowing, so naturally she invites her over as if she had a goldfish memory. The lapses in logic are quite baffling. There’s often a sense that the characters really deserve each other and what’s coming to them – if this was Delhomme’s intention then he’s rammed it home without a shred of subtlety.

Mothers’ Instinct is the classic case of the mediocre 2-star film. There’s a detectable better film in here that just never really emerges into the light. What’s left is a film that misfires all over the place and hasn’t got the conviction to pull itself together properly. Mother knows worst indeed.

Rating: 2 / 5

Review by Gareth O’Connor