Call Me Mommy

The scouts

A woman role-playing conversations with her imaginary daughter before birth sounds like twee indie therapy-speak, except Erickson and Washington flip it into something genuinely unsettling—the pedantry becomes the horror, and you're never sure if we're watching preparation or delusion. It's the kind of premise that makes you *immediately* want to argue about it, which means it's working.

The film's restraint in visual language—its refusal to sentimentalize the maternal—positions it within a lineage of formally austere character studies that interrogate domestic ritual; the editing rhythms feel calibrated to expose rather than smooth over the mother's anxieties.

There's one choice here that unlocks everything: the decision to keep the 'daughter's' voice entirely off-camera, forcing us to read the mother's side of the conversation and feel the strangeness of her specificity when answering for someone who doesn't exist yet.

Reviews

Von Haley Alea Erickson, die auch die Schauspielerin schauspielt, stammt die Idee für den eigenartigen Kurzfilm „Call Me Mommy“. Gemeinsam mit Co-Regisseur Taylor Washington inszeniert Erickson eine Geschichte um eine werdende Mutter, die wirklich auf alles vorbereitet sein möchte.