Meta Mum

Directed by Kick Holman

2024

Door Stop Films

Kick Holman is a Film Studies student at De Montfort University in Leicester and for their final year project has tackled various social media phenomena in new short Meta Mum.

We open with Mumsy, an influencer on social media, who provides a montage video clip of highlights of her career so far. From the obligatory dancing, food eating, blogs and car-filmed selfie stories, the film brilliantly captures the mainstays of social media folk who share every (often vacuous beyond belief) part of their personal lives.

Too blunt? Well, the film soon takes a turn as her followers spot something in this uploaded video and begin posting replies suggesting she is a bad mother. We then see a clip of her trying to force her son to cry on camera at a funeral and all hell begins to break loose.

Meta Mum opens as a ‘Screenlife’ film, For the uninitiated, Screenlife is a form of filmmaking where events are portrayed on a computer or smartphone screen. Gaining popularity owing to the impact of the Internet and mobiles, you may have seen the style in Unfriended (2014), which popularised the format although was not the first. Others of note include Searching (2018) and horror movies Host (2018) and Dashcam (2021), both from Rob Savage.

Often used for the horror genre, the film here uses the style to explore the horror of a mum in desperate need for online clout and engagement, as well as a horrified audience looking for their own.

The expected online apology of course follows - itself a form of engagement - and the director hits all the social media beats it needs to. It briefly  introduces other online personalities including “Mr. React” and “Not Joe Rogan” who create their own videos in response.

At times, the film moves away from the online screen with moments of offline life. This provides an important contrast within the story by showing the ‘real-life’ conflict between mother and son and the struggles of their relationship.

And as her audience continue in their attempts to cancel and unfollow her, we get the flipside of the viewer-creator dynamic too. As a contrast from the lifestyle she has carefully cultivated in the virtual world, she is now being tracked down and filmed intrusively on the street by others.

The film, although not as extreme in its themes, somewhat echoes the story of American YouTuber Ruby Franke. The online mum with millions of followers was convicted of child abuse after shocking discoveries of her life behind the camera were brought to light.

Unlike that abhorrent story though, the film offers some positivity towards the end. As so often seen, the audience will not accept any redemptive apologies, but Meta Mum does question those who hunt down and use controversy for their own content. And the final offline interactions between mother and son go someway to help 'reboot' their personal connection.

A clever, well-crafted and intelligent short, with themes that are also very much hot topics, Holman’s first-rate creativity in using the format helps it delve deep into all the issues in its short runtime. And Meta Mum successfully explores the online personification of many unpleasant human instincts. However, despite the grotty digital behaviour, it proposes some real hope in a world warped by being "overly online".

Follow. Subscribe. And smash that like button for Meta Mum.

★★★★★

5 / 5

Mike Sales