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Mothers Instinct is a tense and incredibly well-made psychological thriller following two mothers, Celine (Anne Hathaway) and Alice (Jessica Chastain), in the 1960s. They appear to be living the perfect suburban American life until Celine's son, Max (Baylen D. Bielitz), dies after falling off of a roof. This spawns a web of paranoia, deceit, and murder that ends with Celine murdering her own husband, Damian (Josh Charles), and Alice and her husband, Simon (Anders Danielsen Lie), then adopting their son, Theo (Eamon Patrick O'Connell).

"Will you come with me when I go to space tomorrow?" Freestyle Digital Media has unveiled a fun trailer for an indie comedy called Darla in Space, a kooky, wacky creation from the filmmakers Eric Laplante & Susie Moon as their feature debut. This premiered at the 2024 Slamdance Film Festival earlier this year, and it'll be out to watch on VOD in October. Darla Peterson just found out she owes the IRS $349,000.22. She teams up with a sentient kombucha scoby named "Mother" who has the ability to grant mind-blowing orgasms to pay off the debt. In exchange, Mother wants Darla's help getting to space. Is this a match made in heaven, or the other place? Alex E. Harris plays Darla, with Constance Shulman, Thomas Jay Ryan, Jenn Lyon, Rasheda Crockett, Eamon O'Connell, and Js Oliver. This is such a weird concept, and it's a real shoestring indie made for less than $100K.

A ’60s-set psychodrama about a pair of suburban housewives whose friendship goes haywire — and then some — after one of their children dies in a freak accident, the misconceived but morbidly entertaining “Mothers’ Instinct” is far too slapdash to respect the seriousness of its premise, but at the same time also far too serious to indulge in the campiness of its plot. The result is a movie that’s a little fucked up, a little fun, and mostly just very, very sad in a way that it doesn’t have the heart to explore.

Alice is the fragile one, at least at first. A crumbling eggshell of a woman who’s just been glued back together by the most discrete male psychiatrists in all of Mayberry, she can hardly make breakfast for her seven- or eight-year-old son Theo (Eamon O’Connell) without threatening to flake apart from the pressure to keep up appearances.

When Toddy Haynes’s May December was released last year, it prompted a worldwide (or at least Twitter-wide) reckoning with the meaning of camp. There were furious debates as to the exact parameters of the term and which works fell within them. For Mothers’ Instinct, this matter becomes a kind of existential crisis, because celebrated cinematographer Benoît Delhomme’s 1960s-set directorial debut can’t decide whether it wants to be considered camp or not, as it awkwardly pitches itself between a somber drama and antic melodrama.

Like May December, this remake of the Olivier Masset-Depasse’s 2018 film Duelles is a domestic drama that throws two women into the same space and steadily ratchets up the tension between them. Alice (Jessica Chastain) and Céline (Anne Hathaway) live in neighboring homes in the suburbs. Alice’s son Theo (Eamon Patrick O’Connell) and Céline’s son Max (Baylen D. Bielitz) are best friends,...

Esteemed cinematographer Benoît Delhomme’s credits have included a conspicuous number of thoughtful, visually sumptuous period pieces, such as The Talented Mr. Ripley, The Theory of Everything and Lady Chatterley’s Lover, as well as a few films made to promote fashion brands like Balmain, Dior and Chanel. In a way, that résumé partially explains why he might have been inclined to make his directorial debut with Mothers’ Instinct, for which he also serves as the Dp.

This pulpy, psychologically shallow and yet beautifully shot period thriller is all about two soignée suburban housewives — played by Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway — who spend the film’s 96 minutes suffering, scheming and losing their minds while wearing immaculate vintage-inspired costumes. Ultimately, the characters’ motivations, like their titular instinct, are weakly delineated, but viewers are well-advised not to worry their pretty little heads about any of that and just concentrate on the pantsuits.

A remake of a 2018 Belgian film,...

Not every good film is necessarily a good time, and vice versa. On the latter front, see “Mothers’ Instinct,” a 1960s-set suburban psychodrama too silly to secure our belief and too reserved to pass muster as go-for-broke camp — but still compulsive enough, twisty enough and finally berserk enough to keep us hooked through all its tonal and narrative lane-changing. As a pair of model homemakers and next-door neighbors whose close friendship is severely undone by sudden tragedy, even stars Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain don’t always seem to be making entirely the same movie: Hathaway’s sly, high-gloss vamping points to a more brittly amusing one than Chastain’s earnest emotional commitment, turning their characters’ escalating picket-fence battle into a compelling tussle for the soul of the script itself. One wins, and not predictably so.

First-time feature director Benoît Delhomme, however, doesn’t have much command over this strange,...

It wouldn’t take much to convince an unsuspecting audience member that Mothers’ Instinct is the latest dispatch from the Don’t Worry Darling cinematic universe. The directorial debut of cinematographer Benoît Delhomme initially appears to be a surface-level rendering of a bygone era, a vaguely defined late 1950s or early 1960s, in which the women are talked out of career prospects and encouraged to stay at home to be wives and mothers, first and foremost, kept at a distance from their husbands’ lives. But, of course, nefarious secrets are discovered to be closer to home and far lower in concept within this stylish melodrama, which hews far closer to the “women’s pictures” of the period depicted in both style and substance than the campier thriller it’s being presented as––though those looking for the latter will still get what they ordered courtesy of Anne Hathaway’s brilliantly rendered turn as grieving mother Céline.

Grey House, a rare thriller on Broadway, will be closing on July 30, after opening at the beginning of June.

The play, which stars Laurie Metcalf, Tatiana Maslany and Sophia Anne Caruso and features direction by Joe Mantello, began preview performances at the Lyceum Theatre on April 29 and opened on June 6. While the concept of horror is not often seen on Broadway, the production was not able to translate that to ticket sales and saw a soft box office throughout its run.

Since opening week, capacity for the show has not risen above 70 percent, and has dipped into the 50s. Grosses have similarly stayed under $400,000.

Written by Levi Holloway, the play follows a couple (Maslany and Paul Sparks) who crash their car in the mountains and seek shelter in a cabin. While there, they witness strange behavior from the inhabitants of the cabin, who include Metcalf, Caruso and a band of young kids,...

Tatiana Maslany, Laurie Metcalf, and Paul Sparks star in ‘Grey House,’ a scary, psychological play that turns Broadway into a haunted house of horrors.

“I’ve seen this movie. We don’t make it…”

Horror is a popular genre for many reasons, but at the end of the day there is just nothing like the genuine experience of being afraid. Horror films do their best to immerse their audience in terror with no reprieve, yet there are inherent limitations to this storytelling medium. There’s still screen, and therefore safety, between the audience and their fears. Live theater, especially those on Broadway, live and die through their ability to not just keep audiences entertained, but to truly believe in the spectacle before them. Horror on Broadway is therefore a deeply appealing combination, albeit one that’s all-too rare because of the difficulty in its execution.

There’s The Crucible, The Elephant Man,...