The 25 most dangerous moms in movies

Even though Jason might be the most prominent villain to have emerged from the Friday the 13th franchise, the first film actually features his mother as the avenging angel of death, striking down the types of carousing camp counselors whose negligence cost her son his life. Betsy Palmer delivers a powerful and disturbing performance, and though she isn’t on-screen all that long, she nevertheless makes an indelible impression whenever she appears. Moreover, she becomes ever more terrifying as the series continues, even though she is rarely more than a severed head or a presence that haunts Jason. In the universe of Friday the 13th, there’s no escaping the demonic mother.

Few on-screen mothers are quite as (in)famous as Faye Dunaway’s Joan Crawford. As she appears in the scathingly funny and campy Mommie Dearest (based on the memoir by Crawford’s adopted daughter), she is a woman of monstrous and towering ego, so driven to achieve her career goals she sacrifices everything, including her daughter’s happiness and well-being. Dunaway captures a little bit of that powerful charisma that made Crawford a giant of the classic Hollywood screen, but, as a whole, the film abandons all trace of subtlety in favor of an over-the-top aesthetic that is as terrifying as it is unintentionally hilarious.  

Angela Lansbury was a giant of stage and screen, but for many, she is best known for portraying lovable characters such as the small-town sleuth and mystery writer Jessica Fletcher on Murder, She Wrote and as the voice of the bubbly Mrs. Potts in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. In The Manchurian Candidate, however, she gives what is arguably one of her best performances as Mrs. Iselin, the wife of a red-baiting senator who is secretly in league with the very communists she supposedly opposes. Lansbury is truly terrifying in this role, and Mrs. Iselin is a woman willing to destroy everyone, including her son, in her pursuit of power.  

Psycho remains one of the most thrilling and frightening of the many films directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and its tortured villain, Norman Bates, is a fixture in popular culture. His alter-ego, the mother whom he murdered and who now occupies a murderous part of his mind, is even more unsettling. Whenever Norman betrays the slightest interest in another woman, Mrs. Bates emerges with deadly intent. When she isn’t butchering women in the shower, she is tormenting her poor son with his inadequacies. As such, she is the epitome of the domineering and destructive mother, a force that Norman can never really reckon with nor escape until she is totally taken over by the film’s end.

One of the most enduringly appealing things about the Scream franchise is its ability to engage in self-reflexivity, playing with the very conventions of the slasher genre while also obeying them. In this light, Laurie Metcalf’s Mrs. Loomis, the killer of Scream 2, is an even better villain than she appears at first blush. There’s no doubt that Metcalf gives one of her finest performances as a deranged woman who is nevertheless driven by a desire to do right by her dead son. Like Mrs. Voorhees before her, she is determined to see justice done, even if that means she has to leave a trail of bodies in her wake. 

Stephen King is one of today’s greatest living horror authors. While some of the film adaptations of his works have struggled to maintain his macabre imagination, Carrie is an exception. Part of what makes the film work is the terrifying presence of Margaret White, the domineering and zealous mother of the main character. Manipulative, controlling, and utterly devoted to her vision of what God wants, including punishing Carrie, she is one of those most responsible for pushing the girl past her endurance. The scene where she hunts her daughter with a knife sears itself in the imagination, so it’s no wonder that actress Piper Laurie was widely lauded for her performance. 

Ridley Scott’s Alien deserves its reputation as one of the finest and most terrifying science fiction films ever made. The alien queen doesn’t really make an appearance until Aliens,  but when she does, she embodies the many terrors that haunt the human imagination. She is incredibly strong and intelligent and makes for a formidable foe for Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. It is, indeed, their intelligence that makes these particular xenomorphs so frightening. Rather than merely animals acting on instinct, they are creatures that can carry out higher-level executive functions, making them even more difficult to defeat.

John Waters has always excelled at creating films that poke fun at the stuffiness of American social mores. In  Serial Mom, he turns his attention to the supposedly staid world of suburbia. Kathleen Turner is delightfully deranged as Beverly Sutphin, a seemingly demure and ideal housewife who harbors a secret: She is a serial killer. Turner takes such obvious delight in portraying the role that it’s impossible not to join those supporting Beverly against the agents of justice, even as she goes on a murderous rampage, leaving a trail of death behind her. 

Robert Eggers’ The Witch is a deeply unsettling piece of folk horror, focusing as it does on a family of English settlers who are banished to the forest, where they have to confront the sinister creature of the title. While the supernatural is a key part of what makes the film so terrifying, the mother, Katherine, is also a force to be reckoned with. She becomes convinced that her daughter is a source of darkness and, in actress Kate Dickie’s capable hands, she becomes a monstrous mother par excellence and, as her grief and the witch’s malign influence begin to take their toll, she even tries to kill her daughter.

Ari Aster’s Hereditary  is one of the director’s finest achievements, using the conventions of horror to explore the nature of intergenerational trauma. While Toni Collette’s Annie is arguably the film’s most sinister character, her mother, Ellen, is the monster hiding in the background. As the leader of a coven determined to bring about the resurrection of a demon king called Paimon, her actions have consequences beyond her death. She is the epitome of the dark, sinister mother whose sinister powers and dark designs ultimately destroy all of her family members, plunging them into despair and the occult. 

Like many of his other films, Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan  is a troubling psychological portrait of a person driven by inner desires and demons. While Natalie Portman’s Nina is the center of the story, her mother is an important part of her life. Clutching and controlling, Barbara Hershey’s Erica Sayers channels her anger at her daughter’s curtailing of her own career into making sure she makes her as neurotic and as driven as possible. The ultimate stage mom, she doesn’t care for her daughter so much as she sees her as an extension of herself, determined to live her life through her.

Mother Gothel is, of course, the main villain of Disney’s Tangled, the studio’s interpretation of the story of Rapunzel and her golden hair. On the surface, Gothel appears to be a kind and loving mother figure to her daughter, seemingly protecting her from the ugliness of the outside world. In reality, she only wants to use the young woman for her own ends, and she’s willing to kill to make sure that she keeps control of her. As with so many other Disney villains, she puts her interests and desires above those of others, and her betrayal seems to strike Rapunzel most deeply. 

Lady Tremaine is the prototypical evil stepmother, emerging from Disney’s Cinderella as cold, calculating, and utterly without mercy, choosing to prioritize the well-being of her daughters over that of poor Cinderella. Memorably voiced by Eleanor Audley, she has an aristocratic manner and cunning mind, making her a formidable adversary for the more innocent and naive Cinderella. While some of her actions are justified in that she is only looking out for the best interests of her daughters, it’s also hard not to feel a sense of justice when her plans are foiled, and Cinderella ultimately ends up with her prince. 

The Goonies is quintessential ‘80s cinema, with a charming mix of adventure, comedy, and youthful adventure. Focusing on a group of kids who set out to save their town from being taken over by an expanding country club, it’s filled with delightful characters. Even its villains have their own sort of appeal, particularly the tough-as-nails and malicious Mama Fratelli, played by the late, great Anne Ramsey. As she would so often throughout her career, Ramsey imbues Mama Fratelli with a tough, almost ruthless exterior, the kind of woman who has had to do some truly brutal things to ensure her place in the world. Small wonder that she is so terrifying to the kids when they encounter her. 

Mo’Nique gives one of the most searing and intense performances of her career in Precious, in which she plays Mary Lee Johnston, the vengeful, sadistic, and abusive mother of the main character, Precious. Though many abusive parents have been in movies, Mary Lee is something else altogether. She takes an unpleasant and terrifying amount of pleasure in subjecting her daughter to every kind of abuse she can muster. To worsen matters, she uses her daughter to exploit the government. She is, then, like every stereotype of the terrible mother brought to life, and the authenticity of Mo’Nique’s performance makes her all that much more upsetting to watch. 

Few characters in the MCU have suffered more than Wanda Maximoff. By the time she appears in Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, she has been seduced by the power of the Darkhold and, determined to inhabit a universe where she can be reunited with her children, she pursues Doctor Strange and the powerful girl America Chavez. Under the book’s malign influence, Wanda fully inhabits the powers of Scarlet Witch, and she becomes the epitome of the avenging angel, ultimately emerging as something of a horror villain capable of killing anyone in her path, including none other than Professor Xavier himself.  

Though she is most famous for playing lovable and kind characters, Octavia Spencer showed her range in the film Ma, in which she plays the character of Sue Ann Ellington. The character is a brilliant undermining of her previous roles. While Sue Anne appears to be a kind and loving mother figure to a group of teens, in reality, she is cruel, manipulative, and dead set on revenge. To make matters worse, she is also notably vicious to her daughter, forcibly keeping her dependent on her. And, because she is played by Spencer, her ominous and sinister nature is all the more chilling. 

With his horror film Get Out,  Jordan Peele demonstrated the extent to which he was as brilliant behind the camera as he was in front of it. Its story of a young African-American whose body is nearly stolen by a white family is terrifying and a fitting allegory for race relations in America. Missy Armitage is particularly chilling in the film, thanks to Catherine Keener. In some ways, her actions are even more chilling than those of her doctor husband since she is the one who convinces the main character Chris, to admit his darkest secrets to her, even as she also hypnotizes him so that his body can be exploited.

Sandra Oh has repeatedly shown that she is one of her generation’s finest actresses, capable of giving tremendous performances in various genres. In Umma, she plays a mother whose daughter is possessed by the vengeful spirit of her own mother, Umma. Like so many other terrifying mothers, Umma represents how trauma doesn’t just stay in the past, instead bleeding into the present and distorting and destroying everything in its path. While the film as a whole ends happily, Umma herself is an unsubtle reminder of the way that, for better and worse, mothers can leave an indelible mark on their children.

Horrifying and frightening mothers are a horror genre staple, but they also appear in other types of Hollywood movies, including comedies. In this regard, Mrs. Lift of Throw Momma from the Train is a great example. Played with scene-stealing bluster by the late Anne Ramsey, she is the type of mother of which nightmares are made, relentlessly emasculating her bumbling son Owen (played by the comedic great Danny DeVito). Even though she is the villain of the piece, there’s no question that she is also one of the best things about the movie, thanks to Ramsey’s committed performance to the comedy. 

As so often in the works of Neil Gaiman, Coraline — the film adaptation of the book of the same name — captures the enchantment and the danger of childhood. As its title suggests, it focuses on the girl Coraline, who finds a portal to another world where she meets alternative versions of her parents. The more sinister of the pair is the being known as Other Mother, who, though she seems to offer Coraline the love and affection she has so long desired, is, in fact, a nefarious creature out to steal her soul. She is the stuff of nightmares in both her actions and her creature design.  

Nicole Kidman gives one of her greatest performances in The Others, a chilling horror film that follows Kidman’s Grace Stewart as she tries to protect her children against unseen and ghostly apparitions. However, in a final twist, it’s revealed that Grace and her children are the ghosts, since she murdered them in despair and then took her own life. What makes Grace so terrifying is that her actions, in her eyes at least, were justified. More sinisterly, she has completely convinced herself that they are still alive, a bit of self-delusion that is frightening, tragic, and unsettling in equal measure. 

Mother’s Day, like many other holidays, has proven to be fertile ground for horror films, including Mother’s Day, which focuses on a trio of women who are terrorized by a sadistic mother and her sons. The film is notable for its visceral, disturbing depictions of violence. Still, it’s the character of Mother who is truly the most unsettling part of this campy and satirical take on the slasher genre. Like the prototypical smothering mother, she has molded her sons into the perfect vehicles for her demented urges. So it’s fitting that, in the end, she is smothered by a pair of inflatable breasts. 

The 2010 film Mother’s Day is, as its title implies, a remake of the 1980 film, though it takes some notable liberties with the original film. It keeps intact the idea of a deranged mother who exerts a powerful and domineering influence over her children. Played by the inimitable Rebecca De Mornay, Mother is the type of villain it is impossible to look away from, no matter how terrifying and terrible her actions might become. Mother is driven by rules, and unsurprisingly, those who disobey them often suffer severe consequences. As a result, she is the personification of the dominating mother figure so many people both fear and desire. 

The film Mildred Pierce was one of the high points in the career of Joan Crawford, one of the most famous stars of classic Hollywood. Mildred does everything she can to provide a better life for her daughter, Veda, particularly once her other younger daughter dies of an illness. However, she refuses to accept that she is raising a monster, and her willingness to turn a blind eye to Veda’s many flaws means that her daughter grows into a spiteful, ungrateful, and ultimately murderous woman who not only despises her mother but also tries to steal her husband.