Munchausen is a 2013 short film, and the fourth written and directed by Ari Aster.
The film centers around a nameless mother (Bonnie Bedelia) who resorts to unethical measures to prevent her son (Liam Aiken) from leaving her for college.
Warning: Unmarked spoilers below. It is highly recommended you watch the short
before proceeding any further.
Munchausen provides examples of:
- Accidental Murder: The mother accidentally kills her son.
- Book Ends: The mother imagines herself running after her son's car as he heads off to college and the film concludes with her attempting to run after her son's coffin at the funeral. Additionally, the mother builds a garden, finding a superhero action figure formerly belonging to her son. The film ends with the garden dead and rotted with the superhero toy still in the same position.
- Deconstruction: Of the Sick Episode. As the mother finds out too late, not every bout of illness is mild.
- Dies Wide Open: The son after he succumbed to his illness.
- Disguised Horror Story: What starts off as a Pixar-esque sequence (much like the first ten minutes of Up's opening or the ending of Toy Story 3), ends with the son dying because of the mother's reckless actions.
- Downer Ending: Despite the mother's efforts, the son's health deteriorates and he dies, and the mother will have to live with the guilt of killing her child by pure selfishness.
- Falling-in-Love Montage: The mother fantasizes about her son falling in love with a girl from his debate club and eventually proposing to her. Even in her fantasy, it doesn't seem as though she approves of her.
- Fantasy Sequence: The entire sequence of the son going to college, joining various clubs, getting a girlfriend to whom he proposes, and graduating is all in the mother's head. By the end of the short, it serves as a tragic reminder of the life she deprived him of when she made her decision to poison him, leading to his untimely demise.
- Gone Horribly Right: The mother uses Feel-Bad Sickness Prompter substance to make her son sick enough to stay with her longer. As we see by the calendar, it works as intended, and he ends up staying home well beyond the three days he had left before he would head off to college. However, none of the time was spent creating more of the happy memories she desired, as the son was bed-ridden and in pain the entire time, something we see take a toll on the mother.
- Hope Spot: The mother discovers "Feel-Good Again Miracle Antidote" and wastes no time using it to reverberate her son's sickness. The hope fades pretty quickly, however, as we see immediately that she gives her son the antidote over several days only for his condition to continue to worsen.
- I Didn't Mean to Kill Him: The mother never meant to kill her son. She only wanted to make him sick so he could spend more time at home with her.
- Incurable Cough of Death: The first sign that the Feel-Bad Sickness Prompter worked is the son's cough that progressively becomes more violent, followed by his vomiting.
- Magic Antidote: Averted. After being visited by the doctor, the mother begins using the Feel-Good Again Miracle Antidote immediately in her son's soups over several days, but his condition continues to worsen regardless, and eventually, he becomes too sick to even swallow the soup.
- Münchausen Syndrome: At least, Munchausen by proxy.
- My Beloved Smother: The mother doesn't want her son to leave for college. She responds by poisoning him in hopes that it will make him stay with her longer, which leads to his death.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The mother initially reconsidered giving her son the sandwich laced with the Feel-Bad Sickness Prompter substance, but her son eats it anyway, believing at first she was playing a trick on him. When he succumbs to the illness she causes, she breaks down.
- Outliving One's Offspring: The mother as a result of her selfishness.
- Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Despite succeeding at giving her son the "Feel-Good Again Miracle Antidote" by placing it in his soup, he nevertheless succumbs to his sickness.
- Tragic Villain: The mother only wanted to spend more time with her son, but it's because of her refusal to let him go that caused his demise.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: The son on the night that he began to get sick.
