‘Matriarch’ Ending, Explained: What Is Happening in Laura’s Hometown?
Welcome to the Ending Explained for Matriarch, the latest folk horror movie arriving on Hulu. The film serves as a very good option to watch this Halloween season. It tells the story of Laura, a woman living in the city who hasn’t seen her mother in more than 20 years. After things get a bit rough in her life, Laura decides to go back to her hometown and try to reconnect with her mother. However, the town seems unchanged, and her mother looks exactly the same as 20 years ago.
The film falls into the folk horror genre, and because of that, it might feel a bit more esoteric than usual. This is not a film with a monster going around killing people, it doesn’t have jump scares, and actually very little happens in between the first act and the third. The ending is quite amazing, but to get there you need to get through a lot of filler. Matriarch would have worked better in the form of a short film, but hey, we take what we get, especially in a sub-genre that doesn’t receive as much love as it should.
The following paragraphs contain spoilers for Matriarch. Read at your own risk.
What Is Happening In Laura’s Hometown?
The film starts with the vision of a man jumping on a dirty pond in the middle of a forest area. This vision is unexplained at the moment, but it will come back right back at the end of the movie. After the vision ends, we are introduced to Laura, a woman living in the city. Laura has been having a hard time living. She clearly hates her job, even when her boss is always trying to be friendly with her, and her love relationships are a mess. No one seems to like her.
Laura has also developed quite a case of foul breath, and she has strange changes in her mood, and she suddenly becomes quite violent. Laura also suffers from an eating disorder. Laura is at the bottom, and she decides to take her life. However, after she suffers death from an overdose, she sees a dark vision of a hand reaching out to her. Laura is saved, but her mind is completely broken. She quits her job and doesn’t know what to do. She also starts dripping a black substance from her nose and mouth, and the event is getting worse every time.
Laura then receives a call from her mother, whom she hasn’t seen in more than 20 years. She hates her mother and blames her for her trauma. However, Laura has nowhere to go, and so she accepts the invitation. Laura packs her stuff and goes back to her childhood home. When she arrives, she sees the rest of the neighbors, and it seems they are all the same. When her mother opens the door, she sees that she hasn’t aged a day since she last saw her. Laura thinks her mother had plastic surgery, but she denies it.
What Happens To Laura At The End Of Matriarch?
Laura sees that her mother is now treating her well, unlike when she was a kid. She finds this quite suspicious, but she also hopes this could mean that they can repair their relationship and actually be a family. However, Celia, Laura’s mother, is quite strange. She screams at Laura when she is asleep. Laura is apparently drugged by the food her mother gives her. She falls asleep like a rock each night. One of those nights, Celia decides to take Laura out of her room and drag her to the greenhouse in the yard. Laura speaks in the middle of being moved, and Celia abandons her mission.
Laura then meets Abbi, an old flame, and the only other person who seems to have aged during her time away from town. Laura and Abbi were a couple before, but Laura left to escape from her mother. Celia also takes Laura to the place where her father died. Laura doesn’t remember him at all, but she then tells Laura that if she wants to speak with him, she can go to the greenhouse. Laura goes and then backs out, which angers Celia.
The other town’s inhabitants also seem desperate for Celia to prepare a ritual, but Celia doesn’t want to. She is forced to, though. That night, Laura discovers in the church that her mother is the leader of a weird cult and that the other inhabitants of the town suck the milk from her breasts to keep themselves young. Laura’s puking is getting worse, she looks like a rotten tree. She goes to Abbi for help, but she is received by Abbi’s dad, who tells her that she is done. Her father didn’t commit suicide but sacrificed himself to some entity to receive powers in exchange, for the powers Celia has now.
Back at the greenhouse, Celia reveals that the creature that gave them powers is trapped in there. The creature is a goddess of nature, and it is Laura’s real mother, not Celia. She explains that after Laura tried to kill herself, the goddess powers became rotten and don’t work anymore. All the townsfolk are not poisoned. Laura kills Celia and leaves, letting all the townsfolk die. The film ends with Laura going back to the pond where his father sacrificed herself, with Laura going down just like him, ending his life once and for all.
