Woe betide the daughter who willingly puts herself in the path of a difficult mother. In Angela Gulner's postpartum allegory horror The Beldham, new mom Harper (a transcendent Katie Parker) arrives with her newborn at her mother Sadie's (Patricia Heaton) creaky, halfway-renovated home. The details are hazy, but Harper has suffered some kind of bout of psychosis whereby she nearly walked into traffic with her daughter. But in recuperation, things only get stranger for her, as she struggles to crawl her way towards stability.

The Beldham is more captivating as a drama than it is as a horror. The former is achieved through Parker's Herculean effort at the film's center, balancing a performance torn between insanity and desperation. Her relationship with Sadie is defined by passive aggression, their conversation persistently stilted, with her mother's attitude towards her bordering on abuse. More confusing than Sadie's strange behavior is the sudden appearance of Bette (Emma Fitzpatrick), an aide whose exceeding warmth seems to belie another set of secrets.