Fairy Tale and Film

The Others
(Alejandro Amenabar, 2001) and 
Carrie

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Houses of Horror 
125
(Brian de Palma, 1976) each provide ‘devouring’ mothers who take too 
close an interest in their children, smothering and repressing them, 
while also seeking to destroy them; yet their intense religious beliefs 
additionally explain their ‘monstrosity’.
19
Coraline
(Henry Selick, 2009), 
based on a novel by Neil Gaiman, offers a refreshingly candid take on 
the impossibility of the maternal ideal. ‘Other Mother’ (Teri Hatcher) 
may seem to fulfil the heroine’s desires – smiley, syrupy voiced, able 
to cook and taking a keen interest in her – yet this apparent dream-
come-true is revealed to be the nightmarish ‘Beldam’
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– who sucks the 
souls from children. Once the heroine realises her true nature, her real 
distracted mother proves infinitely preferable.
A supernatural entity is often used to test mothers, often forcing them 
to extreme lengths to demonstrate their maternal devotion, sometimes 
putting their children before their very lives. As fairy tales repeatedly 
infer: good mothers are invariably dead mothers, with self-sacrifice the 
true measure of maternal worth, a theme horror cinema has increas-
ingly reprised. In the 
Dark Water
films – both the original Japanese 
feature and its US remake – a troubled mother is trapped in an isolated 
apartment block by a spirit that demands she forfeit her life to protect 
her child. The source tale, significantly, enables her to avoid such trag-
edy. In the original story, ‘Floating Water’ (by 
Ring
author Koji Suzuki), 
a single mother is haunted by a child, whose body lies in a water tank 
in the building she has just moved into. The author avoids disclos-
ing whether this tragedy is real or imagined, yet the mother’s extreme 
repression, and cold demeanour towards her daughter, cause us to ques-
tion both her state of mind and her maternal competence, something 
she becomes aware of after succumbing to a vision in the bathroom. 
Acknowledging her terrified daughter’s reaction to her crumbling com-
posure, she admits, ‘it would take enormous emotional strength to be 
a good mother to her’ (Suzuki, 2006: 49). The story ends with the pair 
relocating, apparently leaving the spirit behind as the mother resolves 
to make more effort to consider her daughter’s well-being. Ironically, 
although both films kill the mother off they also make her a much more 
sympathetic figure, with any ‘instability’ emanating from the strain 
her former husband puts on her in seeking custody of their daughter. 
In the original cinematic adaptation, 
Dark Water
(Hideo Nakata, 2002), 
Yoshimi (Hitomi Kuroki) is recently divorced (unlike her character in 
the story), which serves as a catalyst for the problems experienced. 
Forced to relocate to a dilapidated apartment, its damp problems 
ignored by the caretaker, a critique is invited of the poor housing condi-
tions those on a low income are forced to accept – as well as the lack of 

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Fairy Tale and Film
power for a woman on her own. Although Yoshimi strives to cope with 
inhospitable living conditions, the price for seeking independence from 
her husband, and custody of their daughter, Ikuko (Rio Kanno), proves 
costly. We learn that a girl of similar age, Mitsuko (Mirei Oguchi), died 
in the apartment above, the apparent victim of maternal neglect, and 
her presence in their home evokes understandable dread. Wanting the 
mother to herself, Mitsuko threatens Ikuko, forcing Yoshimi to make 
the ultimate sacrifice to appease the spirit. Trapped in an elevator, the 
doors reopen to reveal only a flood of dark water, and Ikuko tearfully 
realises that her mother is gone.
Is the dead child intended as an indictment of divorce, inferring 
fatherless children are endangered in some way? The original story 
reveals that the mother was descended from three generations where 
children were raised without a father, a fact seemingly used to comment 
on rising divorce rates in Japan and suggest accompanying problems. 
However, Nakata’s film adopts much greater sympathy for Yoshimi and 
the difficulties she faces as the main provider (and carer) of a young 
child. The husband, as she states, had no interest in Ikuko until their 
divorce, and seems to resent even picking her up from school, making 
his demand for custody perplexing. A closing scene, titled ‘ten years 
later’, movingly shows an older Ikuko reunited with her mother in the 
haunted apartment, clearly continuing to grieve her loss, yet the spirit 
reappears in the corner of the room, dashing any hope of reconciliation. 
The US version of