The Great Wall of Horror watches Folklore: A Mother’s Love

As you know here at The Great Wall of Horror, we love Asian horror from all across the continent. That is why we were looking forward to reviewing a new HBO anthology series entitled, Folklore.

HBO has recently debuted a show called Folklore that features individual stories from six different Asian countries. Each episode touches on a different legend or deep-rooted superstition from the focus country of that episode.

We will go over each episode on its own because there is no way we could combine them all into one article and do the show any justice. My only complaint is lack of Chinese stories in the series but we will get to that.

“A Mother’s Love” was written and directed by Joko Anwar and stars Marissa Anita, Muzakki Ramdhan, Arswendy Bening Swara, and Max Yanto. The story follows a single mother named Murni and her son, Jodi. She is raising him on her own after her husband passed away in an accident.

She gets a new job cleaning a home while the owners are away. Times have been tough for her and her landlord attempts to lock her out but she convinces him to let her stay just a few more days. After he acts like a jerk, she throws sewage all over the walls, packs her things and leaves to stay in the house she is cleaning.

Image courtesy of HBO

While in the house, she discovers they are not alone there and she calls authorities after she finds several dirty children living in the attic, living off of their own feces. The children are rescued and she is able to find a home to live in with her son.

After that, strange things begin to occur as she starts to question reality and her sanity and it is all due to the fact that she took the children away from the Wewe. A Wewe is a woman who committed suicide because she was barren.

So, she steals away neglected children, starves them and then eats their corpses. Her children were taken and so there must be retribution.

This first episode of Folklore was a hell of a way to start. As a mother, it tugged on my heart as I watched and it was almost uncomfortable. There were so many twists and turns, ups and downs that you never knew what was real.

I found myself tearing up on more than one occasion and the fear I felt was less from a scary monster but the mother-child dynamic that was put at risk. The feeling of loss is far more terrifying than any monster could ever be.

We will continue to go through all of the episodes of Folklore here at The Great Wall of Horror, so keep checking back as we travel across East Asia to learn their tales of superstition and the supernatural.

Have you seen Folklore yet? Are you a fan of Asian horror? Share your thoughts in the section below.