Laura is a hardworking middle-aged woman who lives a lonely life in a big city.
Her demanding job in an advertising agency, combined with her own stringent views on dating,
has left her with few friends.
She has a friendly relationship with her boss, Maxine, but it appears that this relationship
is more on the boss's side than Laura's.
Rather than going out for drinks or social interactions, the protagonist prefers to spend
time alone in her apartment, accompanied only by copious amounts of alcohol and cocaine.
Laura appears to have tried her luck with romance, but her lifestyle also gets in the
way.
One night, she spends time with an ex-lover, and when she asks the woman to move in with
her, the latter expresses her inability to keep up with Laura's drug addiction all of
the time.
Laura spirals even further after the woman leaves, and she ends up drinking and snorting
cocaine all night.
The next morning, she faces the terrible result of the night: her body succumbs to the overdose,
and Laura faints and falls to the ground.
She sees a black liquid flowing towards her and into her mouth in what appear to be hallucinatory
visions, and then two hands emerge from the darkness and reach out to her.
Laura survives the overdose and returns to work the next day, despite the fact that it
could have killed her.
Maxine, who was aware of her colleague's cocaine addiction, now intervenes to assist her, but
Laura becomes enraged and quits her job, as well as rejecting Maxine's assistance.
Laura's actions were motivated by more than just her drug addiction; she had just received
a phone call from her estranged mother.
Laura decides to visit her mother and hometown after twenty years due to contact from her
mother for the first time in twenty years and her own difficult life situation.
Who Was Laura’s Real Mother?
What Had Happened To Her Father?
Laura returns to her hometown of Moorlinch Greinton, a quaint English village in the
English countryside.
When she returns to her old house, she notices that it has changed significantly, but she
is surprised to see that her mother, Celia, does not appear as old as she should.
Laura chooses to believe that her mother must have had numerous surgeries to maintain her
youth, and she is initially judgmental about it.
This mother-daughter relationship is not typical, and it is quickly revealed that Laura's decision
to avoid contact with her family for twenty years was influenced by Celia.
Although it is never explicitly stated, Celia was essentially a mother who mistreated Laura
and yelled at her every chance she got.
Celia now claims that she has never physically hurt her child and has only used verbal abuse
on her, and Laura is furious at her mother's attempt to make her actions appear less cruel.
The other villagers are also not very welcoming of Laura, and while nothing is explicitly
stated, it appears that many conservative-minded villagers dislike Laura because of her romantic
relationship with another girl her age, Abi.
Laura now meets Abi, who is still very disappointed and hurt by the fact that Laura simply vanished
and left for the city twenty years ago, without telling Abi anything.
As "Matriarch" progresses into its more absurd parts, the strangeness of the village and
the few characters seen begin to emerge.
An elderly couple makes incessant love to each other while crammed inside a car and
can't seem to stop even though they want to.
Abi appears to be following Laura around and reporting her movements to someone via her
phone.
The strangest things happen inside Laura's house, where Celia regularly mixes sedatives
into the water or jam she gives Laura.
Laura's mother drags her out of her room and the house on the first night, while she is
in a deep slumber caused by the sedative, and pulls her towards the garden, but Laura
wakes up before Celia can take her there, and she manages to flee the scene.
Laura is wide awake when she discovers herself alone on their lawn and suspects she has sleepwalked.
Laura also discovers her mother's personal diary while sorting through her mother's belongings,
and from it she learns that her mother has a very colorful life of getting intimate with
all the men in the village, and she even rates her experiences with them.
While the daughter initially keeps this to herself, making a cheeky assumption about
her mother's sexuality, she does use it to try to gain moral superiority over Celia when
the two argue about something.
Celia is not pleased, and she orders Laura to leave the house, but she is actually using
this as a ruse to conceal something physical happening to her.
Laura had noticed a black fluid coming out of her nose and ear in place of blood ever
since her drug overdose-induced blackout, and she also noticed this same black ink-like
liquid when she menstruated.
Celia, it turns out, has been getting this same black liquid replacing all of her blood
and bodily fluids, and when she appears to cause a commotion over Laura reading her personal
diary, Celia also has this liquid coming out of her nose, which she tries to hide from
her daughter.
Some of the villagers are also shown to secrete a similar black liquid, proving that the first
time Laura saw the liquid during her overdose was not a hallucination but a true occurrence.
Things are gradually revealed as the film progresses toward the climax, and the entire
story becomes clear.
Laura thought her father committed suicide before she was born by drowning himself in
a swampy lake behind their house.
In reality, the man was a practitioner of black magic and other secretive arts (the
film does not name what the father used to practice and just says that the man had some
other-worldly knowledge).
After his marriage with Celia, the wife wanted a child of their own, but the couple was not
able to conceive, and so, after years of trying, the father decided to sacrifice himself in
order to get a child.
Using all his black magic knowledge and skills, he walked into the swampy pond (this is actually
the scene that “Matriarch” begins with) and gets a demonic figure of a six-breasted
matriarch to come down and live in the village.
This demon had then given birth to Laura through Celia, for the latter to rear as her own.
But Celia did not enjoy this shared motherhood, and it seems that she was harsh on her child
because of this.
As Celia was the mother to her child, the demonic matriarch gave the woman certain powers,
one of which was that black liquid that she secreted from her body, and this liquid was
a rich source of virility and youth.
After Laura had left the village, Celia started to make use of this liquid that would come
to her (most possibly once every month, like a menstrual cycle) by selling it to the villagers
in exchange for money and influence.
By now, twenty years later, all the villagers were tremendously dependent on Celia to share
her power with them, and without this liquid, they were actually very old people who would
have died otherwise.
Laura witnesses all this when she goes to the local church and sees her mother stand
on the pedestal, and all the villagers feed on the black liquid from her breasts, after
which the villagers immediately indulge in an orgy.
The only people who had refused to sell their souls to this dark magic were the village
priest, Ken, his wife, and his daughter, who happened to be Laura’s lover, Abi.
Being the daughter of an other-worldly demon or God (you are free to choose), Laura was
expected to possibly carry on this lineage of dark powers and payback for getting her
life.
But instead, she had created a lifestyle of addiction that had resulted in an overdose.
It is now revealed that Laura had actually died during her overdose, but the matriarch
had used her powers to revive her to life because Laura had not yet achieved all the
greatness she was supposed to achieve.
The matriarch now wanted her daughter to return to her, and she made it felt on all ends.
While this wish was relayed to Celia by her usual black magic-oriented communication method,
and Celia, therefore, contacted her daughter after twenty long years, Laura herself saw
the vision of the two hands calling out to her, which was basically the matriarch calling
out to her.
Now that Laura knows all this, Celia convinces her to step into the darkness at the back
of their garden, where the beastly matriarch lives so that she keeps the supply of black
liquid power intact, and the village (and Celia herself) survives.
Abi also helps Celia in her efforts, as the woman convinces Laura to do the same, but
things come to a brief halt when the old priest, Ken, tries to stop this sacrifice.
He walks into the garden and confronts Celia with a firm belief that she and her husband
had only brought dangerous greed amongst the villagers, but he, too, learns of a revelation
that shakes him.
‘Matriarch’ Ending Explained: What Finally Happens To Laura?
Ken used to believe that his wife and daughter were staunchly against the acts of Celia and
the villagers, as these actions went against the teachings of God and Christianity, but
Abi had actually switched sides a few years earlier.
As it turned out, Abi got cancer, much like her mother, but while her mother died, Abi
wanted to live and sought help from Celia, who cured her with the dark powers of the
matriarch.
However, now when the matriarch’s powers were fading because Laura had not yet been
handed over to her, Abi’s cancer was returning as well, and she was now helping Celia only
to ensure her own recovery.
It was to Celia that Abi was earlier reporting the whereabouts of Laura, making sure that
she did not suddenly leave the village.
Ken cannot digest all of this, especially when Abi points out to him that these dark
powers gave her instant results while his religion and God could not, and the man stabs
himself to death.
Laura is now left to only the whims of her mother, both her acting mother and the real
one, and she is given over to the matriarch, who cradles the woman on her lap.
But unlike what was expected, the matriarch lets Laura go, and the woman now quickly turns
vengeful against Celia.
Despite the latter begging her not to, Laura frees the beastly matriarch and relieves her
from the duty of providing for the whole village every month.
Now the two women return to the church, where the villagers, who have turned all old and
shriveled, beg for the black liquid that would give them youth and keep them alive.
However, that well has dried up, and when Celia tries to show her power over the villagers,
Laura hits her mother with a shotgun and smashes her skull in, bringing an end to the frenzy
of the evil woman.
Laura now returns to her house, where she gets rid of her clothes and urinates on the
grand piano that her mother used to force her to play when she was a child.
While no explanation for this bizarre act and scene is provided, it is probably a sign
of ultimate defiance against the mother.
Laura then walks into the same swampy pond behind their house and drowns herself.
Whether she, too, would turn into a beastly matriarch and provide for an entire village
is not something that the film delves into, and it is best kept that way.