Halloween is an occasion to play in the dark. It’s a night where we can pretend to be someone else – someone cooler, darker, or more dangerous – and escape the trappings of our normal lives just for an evening. It’s a metaphor where we as a society stand up to the demons that threaten us by pretending to actually invite them in for just one night.

Where things get hard is when the night ends…and the demons don’t want to get off the stoop.

YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER is the story of Angela (Carolyn Bracken) and her daughter Char (Hazel Doupe). As the story begins, it is clear that Angela is barely present mentally for her daughter – often shirking responsibilities over on to her mother and brother. The situation becomes far more concerning though when one afternoon Angela simply disappears.

Char does her best to cope – managing to succeed at school academically, if not necessarily socially. When her mother finally re-appears on the doorstep though, the entire family can tell that something is very wrong.

The question then becomes whether the single mum needs to be supported through an intense round of medication and therapy…or whether far more drastic steps need to be taken.

There is always a desire in parents to shelter their children; to keep them unawares of life’s harsh realities and in the dark about personal struggle. It’s understandable, of course – why saddle our youth with scenarios and situations they do not yet have the tools to cope with or comprehend. Perhaps that’s what makes looks of recognition in children so tragic. It’s a clear signal that despite a parent’s best efforts to “spare them the truth”, the facts of the matter have come to light.

This is what we see very early-on in YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER. When Angela is driving Char to school, there is a tense expression of awareness on the child’s face. The mother might not have wanted to be straight with her daughter about the challenges she faces, but the girl is long past pretending that they aren’t both facing something.

The question this film may leave a viewer with is what to make of the darkness it presents. The film begins by wrapping Angela’s demons as a manifestation of struggling with her mental health. The subsequent journey is as dark and intense as one might expect – the parent disappears, she struggles with treatment, she is prone to manic expressions of exuberance. However, the story doesn’t want to leave things there.

No, without giving anything away, YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER wants us to see Angela’s situation as more than a woman dealing with the trappings of mental health. It wants to take us somewhere altogether different, with a rationale that is not scientific. That’s not a bad thing, just a choice that undercuts a lot of the themes of mental health.

Ultimately, YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER is a story of family and the way a challenge that faces one family member affects them all. There is a stigma in our society not only in talking about the mental health challenges affecting oneself, but also the challenges that affect one’s family. Voices soften, eyes lower, doors close.

Whether or not one accepts the pivot of natural to supernatural in this affecting Irish folk tale, one thing is true: one must accept that we as a society need to start acting better not only to those working through poor mental health but also to the friends and families that their journeys affect.