The Killer Father and the Final Mother: Womb-Envy in The Cell

Abstract

This paper introduces and examines the ‘Killer’ Father and the ‘Final’ Mother in Tarsem Singh’s The Cell (2001). They are descendants of Carol J. Clover’s ‘Killer’ and ‘Final Girl’ respectively. The Killer Father is a bad father figure who tortures or even kills his family. The Final Mother is a ‘muscle mother’, who kills the Killer Father in order to save her child from his fringes. This study uses the psychoanalytical concept of ‘womb-envy’ as a critical tool to illustrate the unconscious motives of the Killer Father. The employment of womb-envy shows that the Killer Father’s behaviour displays unconscious envy of the female reproductive organs, and the capacity to give birth and nurture. In the end, this paper argues that the presence of the Killer Father and the Final Mother in the contemporary horror cinema is indicative of the dilemmas that preoccupy modern parenthood and the agency of the nuclear family.