By Mo Moshaty

Indonesian horror has always thrived on the uneasy terrain of the family home, and Randolph Zaini’s A Woman Called Mother sharpens that tradition for a new generation. Produced by MVP Pictures and making its world premiere at Fantastic Fest 2025 in Austin as part of the Next Wave Competition, the film will hit Indonesian cinemas on September 25, 2025. That’s quite a debut for a story that began life as a viral Twitter/X thread.

The premise: Yanti (Artika Sari Devi) is left to rebuild after her husband abandons the family. With daughter Vira (Aurora Ribero) and son Dino (Ali Fikry) in tow, she opens a salon in their new town. On the surface, it’s a standard comeback arc. But to her kids, Yanti feels less like a mother and more like a stranger in her skin, and her sudden business success smells of something darker than good marketing.

Zaini, co-writing with Titien Wattimena, leans into melodrama before letting the horror crack through. The pacing may frustrate purists, but the eruptions earn their place, when the film cuts, it cuts deep. The sheer high-pulsed range in performances carry the film. Devi is magnetic, able to pivot from tenderness to menace with no warning. Ribero and Fikry ground the story with raw, vulnerable turns as kids who want their mom back even as they sense she might be gone for good.

There’s also a meta thrill in watching a Twitter horror thread (Dia Bukan Ibu, “She Is Not Mother”) morph into festival cinema. @jeropoint’s viral tale of divorce, an uncanny mom, and a too-successful salon hit a nerve in 2023, and Zaini doesn’t sand down its weirdness. Instead, he scales it up, fusing folklore dread with social-media immediacy.

A Woman Called Mother feels less about ghosts and more about the terror of not recognizing the person who raised you. Uneven but striking, it’s a film of images that linger: milk and blood, glamour and menace, a scream that refuses to die down.

A Woman Called Mother premiered at Fantastic Fest 2025 and opens across Indonesia on September 25, via MVP Pictures.

“Less about ghosts and more about the terror of not recognizing the person who raised you, A Woman Called Mother lingers with blood, milk, and a scream that won’t die down.”