Dissecting Horrors New Favourite Framework: The Birth Scene

Words: Madelynne Flack

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Critic Robin Wood once theorised that the true inspiration of the horror genre "is the struggle for recognition of all that our civilization represses or oppresses” and he was right. I realised how much of a lens horror can be into the convolutions of the female experience from an early age. I don’t know whether that came from watching Carrie, in Carrie (1976) telekinetically massacre her peers, or observing Dani, in Midsommer (2019) grin as she watched her cheating-boyfriend burn to death, but I knew there was always something I could empathise with in these murderous women. A phenomenon that I know I’m not alone in experiencing.

At its core, horror is a genre centred around women. It was one of the first genres to narrativize through women, and continues to portray some of the most unnerving anxieties that come with the female experience. And, in the last year, it’s chosen to do this through one framework: the horror of childbirth .

Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen films like Immaculate, Alien: Romulus, and even The Substance, portray the graphic reality of childbirth. These films not only question what we view as ‘motherhood’, but also explore the harsh truth many women face when their reproductive choices are limited.  It’s not a coincidence that this new framework follows the U.S. Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, a decision which ended the federal protection of abortion rights and drove the control of reproductive choices into a patchwork of state laws last year.
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“I think there’s definitely a shift happening,” says Faye D. Effard, aka Effy, the curator of a horror film screening event Gynophobia. “More mainstream audiences seem willing to engage with the creative and intellectual reasons behind portraying these scenes. It’s as if these films are responding directly to the current political climate,” adds the 24-year-old. “[They’re] using the imagery of birth to grapple with the violence and intrusion that many women feel today, regarding their own bodies.”

The most obvious example of this is Immaculate (2024), which sees Sydney Sweeny’s character, Celia, join a convent in rural Italy - where she becomes dubiously pregnant despite not having sex. At the film's climax Celia is forced to go through an incredibly violent labour. Where, in an impressive one-shot take, we see her bite through the umbilical cord with her own teeth, and then go to kill her newly born child with a rock. 

While, yes, Immaculate’s use of religious imagery is discernibly intentional, it shows us how powerful institutions value the importance of a concept - which in this case is the god-human hybrid growing in Celia’s womb - more than they do a woman’s life. Reflecting the anxiety many women have about their bodies becoming commodities to the religious agenda in the post-Roe era.

Alien: Romulus (2024) is another example of the horror birth trope. In the film we see Kay, who - in a way true to the series’ nature - ends up giving birth to a deformed looking extraterrestrial creature. Her shipmate, Rain, rips apart the umbilical cord with her bare hands, before attempting to hunt down the alien, which is peering out of an acidic placenta. The alien is a clear representation of an unwanted entity; a parasite, sucking the life from its host.

“Motherhood has been elevated — or perhaps demoted — to the realm of lifestyle, an all-encompassing identity with demands and expectations that eclipse everything else in a woman’s life.”

“Horror’s focus on the body makes it an ideal space for these discussions. Whether it’s through the exploration of bodily violation, reproduction, or the grotesque,” notes Effy.

If we were to look at the horror-family-tree, we’d see that before these nausea-inducing labour scenes, came a decade-long infatuation with ‘motherhood’. After all, what came first—  the gory birth scene or the demon mother? Although the trope has existed in horror since the genre’s beginning, most notably in Steven Spielberg's Psycho (1960), we’ve seen a renewed interest in ‘motherhood’ in recent years in films like Hereditary (2018) and Pearl (2022) which have forced us to pay attention to the clandestine realities of motherhood.

As a society, motherhood has compounded in gay rhetoric; ‘mother’ as a world of endearment, as opposed to a sign of parenthood. A piece by the New York Times coined our interest in ‘motherhood’ as far back as 2014. Relating it to the weighty expectations that fall on the postmodern mother. Stating that it’s “no longer viewed as simply a relationship with your children,” but as “a role you play at home and at school, or even a hallowed institution.” The author says motherhood “has been elevated — or perhaps demoted — to the realm of lifestyle, an all-encompassing identity with demands and expectations that eclipse everything else in a woman’s life.” 

Coralie Fargeat’s The Substance (2024), is perhaps the least suspecting portrayal of both of these frameworks. If nothing else, the body-horror is an incredibly violent comment on the unavoidable cycle of life - a terrifying reality, where a younger, hotter version of yourself could break through the flesh on your back, making you painfully writhe around on the floor like a fish out of water ready to have its spine ripped out.  Demi Moore's character Elizabeth Sparkle resents Sue, played by Margaret Qually, for being everything she is not, while also being, literally, everything that she is. Throughout the film the characters are reminded of this reality; ‘you are one,’ they are told. Although the movie isn’t an explicit mother/child dynamic, The Substance touches on the idea of letting go of your youth and beauty as it becomes the flesh of another human being. 

“In many ways, horror forces us to confront the very things we are most afraid of — both on a personal level and a societal one,” Effy tells me. “It is often through this confrontation that feminist issues emerge most powerfully.” Although social commentary in the genre is nothing new, this year has seen many on screen hits bring this narrative to the masses and horror remains a window into our unspoken thoughts and feelings on changing political discourse, women's reproductive rights and bodily autonomy.