Mothers who smother and control their offspring in Live-Action Films.
- A Bad Moms Christmas:
- Sandy literally babies Kiki and meddles in her marriage.
- Amy's mom Ruth insults her Christmas decorations, overindulges her grandkids and acts rudely towards her daughter's boyfriend Jesse.
- Gordon/Fester's mother Abigail in The Addams Family. Although to be fair, she's not actually his mother; she just took him in after finding him unconscious and amnesiac many years ago and took full advantage of his blank slate to fill it with her personal agenda.Gordon/Fester: (before opening the book, 'The Hurricane') "You were a terrible mother! (laughs) THERE! I SAID IT!!!
- Howard Hughes' mother in The Aviator, who caused his OCD.
- Awake (2007): Clayton's mother Lillith's over-protective nature is the main reason that he is afraid of telling her about his engagement, as he knows she would never accept Sam. She also tries to get him to drop Jack, his best friend, as his heart surgeon in favor of an acquaintance of hers who is at the top of the field. As it turns out, she was right on both counts.
- Hilary from Beast (2017). Dear god Hilary. She closely monitors Moll at all times and controls almost all aspects of her life, including her job, her hobbies, her friends and her birthday party. She gets angry and berates and guilt-trips Moll if she does anything to assert her independence. Hilary even quit her job to homeschool Moll full time and keep an eye on her when she was a teenager; while Hilary's controlling behavior was more understandable when Moll was younger and had just been kicked out of school for stabbing a student, it looks a lot less reasonable in the present day, where Moll is a grown woman who hasn't acted out in years.
- Nina's mother in Black Swan who cripples her daughter's development by her overbearing parenting style and interference.
- Lionel's mother in Braindead. Even when she turns into a zombie, her son is unable to confront her until the very end.
- Arguably, Violet's mother in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (2005). Mother and daughter dress alike (Violet, thankfully, does not wear Mom's slathered-on makeup), and Mom is constantly pushing Violet to compete. That said, Violet seems to enjoy it.
- The mom from A Christmas Story, especially with the younger kid. She wraps him in so many layers for the walk to school, he can't put his arms down. Even his freak-out fear-crying doesn't faze her. Plus, the tolerance of his bizarre eating habits. Ralphie gets the smothering too, but to a lesser extent ("You'll shoot your eye out!").
- Jonathan from Cluny Brown only needs his mother to clear her throat to know that she's disapproving of whatever he does.
- Though she only appears in one scene, Max's mother in Collateral had full control over her son despite being confined to a wheelchair. Memorably, she chastises him for bringing her flowers, only to do an about-face when he tells her the flowers are from his "friend" Vincent.
- In the 1994 documentary Crumb, Seminal underground comic artist R. Crumb and his brothers describe growing up terrorized by their harridan of a mother. The boys' traumatic childhoods manifest in Crumb's comics, which become increasingly fetishized and twisted. Charles Crumb, the eldest brother, committed suicide mere months after filming. His mother's response? "How could you do this to me!?"
- In Deadly Advice, Iris Greenwood rules the house with an iron hand and has such power over her daughters that they see themselves as becoming bitter old spinsters.
- Thomas Perry from Dead Poets Society is an extreme version who manages to smother Neil throughout the story even though he’s old enough to make his own choices.
- In Deranged, Ezra's mother Amanda is a domineering religious fanatic who indoctrinates him to believe that all other women are sinners. When she dies, her son completely loses his mind and becomes a Grave Robbing Serial Killer.
- Polly Cronin, Lizzie's mother in Drop Dead Fred.
- Duck Butter: Sergio and Nima both don't get along with their mothers well, resenting how they tried to control them in different ways which clashed with their desires.
- Godzilla vs. Kong: The film hints that Mark Russell has developed shades of this towards his daughter Madison after the events of the previous film which left her in his custody — besides dismissing everything she tries to tell him about Godzilla's rampage no matter how common-sensed her pointers are, Mark makes it clear he flat-out just wants her completely cut off from the current Titan situation because he out of personal bias doesn't want to have to deal with the stress of worrying about her on top of everything else; but he also clearly thinks Madison is Just a Kid who doesn't know what she's talking about, even though she proved in the previous film that she is anything but. The novelization's expansion portrays Mark as being even worse than this and slightly deconstructs it: Mark would rather try and mould Madison to be what he thinks she should be (an ordinary teenage girl) instead of accepting what she went through in the previous film has irrevocably made her Wise Beyond Her Years and instead of making any real attempts to understand her differences from him, and because of this Madison has a strained relationship with Mark and resents him, Calling the Old Man Out more than once. Is it any wonder that a portion of the MonsterVerse fandom prefer to headcanon a giant prehistoric animal as Madison's father figure over Mark?
- Penny Pingleton's mother Prudy treats her like this in Hairspray, forbidding her from watching "The Corny Collins Show" and from visiting Tracy's house.
- In the movie Heartbreakers, Sigourney Weaver plays a Smother, although quite tame by the rest of the examples on this page. She sincerely doesn't want her daughter's heart to be broken. However, she will con and lie to her daughter to achieve this. But near the end, when she sees that her daughter truly was in love with their last con, the con that the Smother drugged, she comes clean, and lets her daughter live her life.
- Della's loud and gauche mother Mrs. Lorna Hathaway in Heller In Pink Tights is such an example: she controls her daughter, babies her, tells her what to wear and do her hair at age 20 (almost 21), slut-shames Angela, and when Della stands up to her, Lorna starts exclaiming how she gave her own acting career up for her and gets nothing in return from her daughter.
- Holiday on the Buses: Mrs. Hudson won't let Mavis have any time alone while they're on holiday at Pontins.
- Jessica Lange plays Martha, an Evil Matriarch version of the trope in the movie Hush, opposite Gwyneth Paltrow as her daughter in law Helen. Not only she killed her husband to cover up how she was cheating on him and she aborted her unborn first baby when she learned said baby was a girl and not a boy, but she intends to isolate Helen from everyone even during childbirth (she succeeds) and then kill her so she can have her son Jackson and her baby grandson Kyle all to herself. (She fails).
- Ice Princess. Both the main character's mother and The Rival's mother are forcing their own ambitions upon their daughters. Even the parents of secondary and background characters seem to follow this trope.
- Jack Spade's mother in I'm Gonna Git You Sucka, who insists that he put on a sweater before he goes out and fights against men twice her size to protect him. When he goes up against Mr. Big, she shows up with a shotgun to join in. Her son eventually breaks free by locking her in a closet until the fight's over — which pisses her off no end.
- In the CBC movie Jack, about Canadian politician Jack Layton, Olivia is portrayed early in the movie as living with her mother out of tradition; said mother is portrayed as being very picky about who her daughter should date, and very critical of Jack.Jack: Ten years in civic politics, and I'm not afraid of your mother.
Olivia: You should be. - In The Killing Kind, Terry and his mother Thelma have a relationship of unusual intimacy. Thelma, an amateur photographer, obsessively photographs Terry, and frames the numerous portraits in the house. One day at the poolside, Terry pulls Lori into the water after she playfully pushes him in, and becomes aggressive, holding her head underwater. The altercation is witnessed by Thelma, who blames Lori for "leading Terry on" and calls her a slut. Thelma also obsessively feeds Terry chocolate milk like he is a still a little boy.
- Listen to Your Heart: Victoria closely controls her daughter Ariana's life, trying to drive her away from Danny as he's not good enough in her view. She tries to dictate whether Ariana has a cochlear implant or not as well. It's indicated that she partly became overprotective because Ariana is deaf, and lost her father to the same disease which caused this disability. However, even when Ariana is grown up she still won't ever let her decide things for herself. Nor was she very accommodating to Ariana's deafness, not learning sign language to facilitate an easier communication or having her even taught it (though she did hire a translator after Ariana learned this on her own). Ariana finally rebels and breaks out of her control.
- In The Love Guru part of Darren Roanoke's mother pressured him to succeed from a young age, and only showed him affection when he did. Part of his marriage troubles stems from the belief that his wife would only love him as long as he succeeded, like his mom. When Darren felt afraid of playing again, his mother believed his fear meant she needed to pressure him even harder.
- Vicente's mom in the Colombian Dramedy "Mama, Tomate La Sopa" ("Mom, Drink the Soup"). The main conflict of the story is Vicente trying to get a business on his own and getting the woman he wants, as his mother's smothering nature have impeded him from getting anything on his own, which he thinks makes him of no value.
- The film Marty starring Ernest Borgnine also counts as this, as the John Candy version is actually a remake.
- The most famous character of Brazilian comedian Paulo Gustavo was D. Hermínia, from Minha Mãe é Uma Peça (My Mom Is A Character; or more literally, My Mom Is a Play[er], given it originated in the theater... and was inspired by Gustavo's own mother!) and its sequels, a mother who keeps overly protective and controlling of her two children who remained at her home, even as they're teens or adults. One scene
has Hermínia going to the club in her nightgown (though it fit the pajama party-themed event) to make her youngest daughter leave - by taking over the sound system to tell humiliating things about the daughter. - The Black Queen in MirrorMask. Her smothering behaviour is why the Rebellious Princess ran away and used for one hell of a Brainwashed sequence.Black Queen: You mean, let her choose her own food... her own clothes, make her own decisions. Love her, don't try to possess her?
Helena: That's exactly what I mean.
Black Queen: (Beat) Absolutely out of the question. - Monster-in-Law pits a Beloved Smother against the woman her son is engaged to. However she gets better after her assistant points out both that she is far worse than her own mother-in-law and that her actions (to make her son happy) are unwarranted: he IS happy.
- Lowell from Most Likely to Murder (2018) was accepted into Stanford, but his mom wouldn't let him go because she wanted to keep him around.
- Rhonda's mother in Muriel's Wedding, though she's a lot more well-meaning about it than many of these examples.
- In Nice Girls Don't Explode, the protagonist's mother tries to keep her from meeting other boys because when she becomes aroused her pyrokineticist powers activate and she sets things on fire by being a secret arsonist who plants pryotechnics all over town and sets the occasional building on fire and makes her daughter believe that she has pyrokineticist powers that activate when she is aroused.
- Hitchcock gives us another nightmare mother in Notorious. Alex's mother not only seems to be instrumental in his Nazi activities, but she responds very badly to his falling for Alicia.
- In Now, Voyager, Charlotte Vale's mother is a particularly nasty version of this trope, controlling her daughter and keeping her from being independent through emotional abuse.
- In Oedipus Wrecks, Woody Allen's segment from the 1989 anthology film New York Stories, Allen's character has one of these. When the mother "permanently" disappears as part of a magic show, he thinks his troubles are over... until she re-appears as a giant disembodied head in the New York sky and starts bossing him around for the entire city to hear.
- Billy Bibbit in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest is a particularly dark example, as the Big Nurse's threat of telling his mom about his sexual escapades in the final part drives him to suicide.
- The mother of John Candy's policeman character in Only the Lonely, right up to the guilt trips and the relentless tormenting of the son's shy, withdrawn Love Interest. Many of the guilt trips even occurred within her own son's imagination, as he'd guilt-trip himself with vivid fantasies of all the horrible things that might happen to her without him around (inevitably ending with a close-up of her ironically wishing him a good time with whatever he was doing at that moment).
- Our Miss Brooks: In the series' the cinematic Grand Finale, Mr. Boynton's mother is this way. Mr. Boynton ends up buying a house to take care of his ailing mother. However, the elder Mrs. Boynton is ultimately a kind woman and eventually conspires with Mrs. Davis to ensure Miss Brooks is able to marry her son and live Happily Ever After.Mrs. Boynton: Believe me, my dear, I wouldn't stand in the way of your happiness for all the world!
- The female protagonist of The Piano Teacher is aged around 40, but still single and living with her mother. It's suggested that the absence of her father (who is in a mental institution) and her mother's overbearing behavior has made her incredibly repressed, to the point that she refuses Walter's advances because she's "going out with {her} mother on the weekend". Both women even sleep in double beds pushed together, to boot.
- Mrs. Bates from Psycho who manages to smother Norman throughout the story even though she's dead.
- From a meta-point of view, the franchise zig-zag's this trope. It is speculated that the relationship between Norman and his real mother was something of an inversion of this trope, with him being obsessively dependent on and possessive of her despite her wish for him to be more independent, ultimately leading him to murder her and her lover as he did not want to share her. However, the later prequel film and TV series go right back to blaming Mrs. Bates for keeping Normal unnaturally close to her, up to and including Parental Incest.
- The Mexican Mind Screw Santa Sangre (Holy Blood), directed by Alejandro Jodorowsky, is about an armless mother — maimed by her husband after she discovers about his affair — literally taking control of his son's hands and using them to exact vengeance and commit murder, although The Reveal suggests that it is all in the son's mind, the mother not having survived the mutilation.
- Mrs. Railton-Bell, Sybil's awful mother in Separate Tables. She tells Sylvia what to do, what to eat, and what to think. She won't let Sybil get a job and she's determined to stop any hint of romance between Sybil and Major Pollock.
- There is a mother/daughter version in Sightseers. Carol is not happy to see her thirty-something daughter Tina go off on a holiday with her new boyfriend Chris. In one scene, we see Carol lying in a heap at the foot of the stairs, pressing the button on her panic alarm pendant. When Tina does not reply, Carol gets up and walks off.
- Aunt Martha in Sleepaway Camp is an adoptive version of this to Angela. Who is actually her nephew Peter; she wanted a girl, so she forced Peter to adopt his recently-drowned sister's identity.
- There's an actual movie called Smother. Care to guess what the mother's like?
- Snapshot (1979): Despite appearing only briefly, Angela's mother cements herself as this when she blames Angela for being stalked and slaps her.
- The entire point of Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot is Stallone's character being humiliated by the presence of his mother.
- Surf Nazis Must Die: Smeg, the youngest member of the titular surfing criminal gang, is constantly harangued by his mother for being with such a crowd. He even ends his role on the film with his mother grounding him and standing guard outside of his room's window so he won't sneak out, so he is unable to warn the Surf Nazis about Mama Eleanor Washington coming for them in full Roaring Rampage of Revenge mode.
- Owen's mother from Throw Momma from the Train.
- Leo's mother is said to have been this in "Mr. Steinway" segment of Torture Garden: driving away all his girlfriends so they cannot disrupt his career. It is strongly implied that it is her spirit that is possessing his grand piano.
- Sam Witwicky's mom in the Transformers Film Series.
- In Under the Piano, Regina always had this problem, but it gets especially bad after her four oldest children move out. She moves her autistic daughter Rosetta's bed into her room so she can watch her sleep and forces her to stay in bed until Regina gets up on non-workdays.
- The mother of Bobby Boucher (Adam Sandler's character) in The Waterboy. She eventually reveals that she was pretending to be a domineering Evil Matriarch due to the pain of his father deserting them, realizing that Bobby needs to have his own life, and helps him get to the big game at the end.
- White Wolves: Cry of the White Wolf: : Pamela’s mother spends a while fretting over whether she has proper clothes for the boot camp, trying to make sure she won’t get motion sickness during the ride, and asking if the plane has a first aid kit while hugging her slightly embarrassed daughter. Given how the plane ends up crashing, she turns out to be Properly Paranoid.
- X-Men Film Series:
- Although Charles is Raven's foster brother in X-Men: First Class, he tends to behave more like her Parental Substitute (this is confirmed in X-Men: Days of Future Past when he tells Erik that he had "raised" her). Xavier is so overprotective of his sister that it had stifled Raven's psychological growth as an adult, and she resents his pushiness to the point where they become estranged. Erik reminds Charles that the latter "...grew up with her. She couldn't stay a little girl forever, that's why she left." By the end of Days of Future Past, Xavier finally accepts that Raven is her own person and stops trying to influence her.
- In a more general sense, Professor X doesn't encourage those who are closest to him to be fully independent as adults. Although most of his students eventually leave the school after graduation and assimilate into human society, those who are part of the X-Men never "leave the nest," so to speak. They stay together as a surrogate family while living under Xavier's roof, working as teachers, and Charles continues to exert his paternal authority over them even when they're roughly 57 years old (as shown with Jean Grey, Cyclops, and Storm in the Alternate Timeline 2023 scene of Days of Future Past—heck, Beast would be around 80!).
- X-Men: Apocalypse: Although Xavier is wiser in the Alternate Timeline and knows that he shouldn't "cage the beast" when it comes to the Phoenix, he still keeps his daughter figure Jean on a tight leash by the way he nurtures her. His goal is to placate as much as possible the "fire" within her before it consumes everything and everyone in its path. To borrow a theme from First Class, Charles carefully molds the emotional comfort he offers to Jean as the "serenity" which can quell to some degree the "rage" of her wild "flames." His manipulation of her is so well-crafted that he dictates when the Phoenix — a force of nature — is free to spread its wings. Jean is now a "goddess" in comparison to Professor X, yet she remains subservient to her surrogate father, and it's implied that they're closer in the new timeline than in the old one. While there's no denying that he controls her with love, it does bring about the best outcome Xavier can hope for in terms of Jean being wholly in charge of the Phoenix, and not vice-versa. In this instance, his coddling is portrayed as having a positive impact on her psychological maturation. Bryan Singer outlines in his commentary the sway Charles has over Jean:Singer: 'It was just a dream' [...] He lies to her. Because he knows, because he's such a powerful psychic, [...] the power of Phoenix is growing inside her, and it's going to become out of control. And she's terrified of it, but doesn't understand it. And he does understand it. And he can't let on to her that he understands it because it would be too frightening, and she would run away. So this scene is all about control. All about keeping that power, and keeping it all under control. And only at the end of the movie does he give her permission [...] to explore her power.
- Young & Wild: Daniela's mother attempts to control her through different punishments and spying on her, as she's appalled by Daniela having any extramarital sex (due to being a devout Evangelical Christian).
