What The Mother From The 2022 Horror Movie Looks Like In Real Life

Zach Cregger’s film “Barbarian” cause a minor stir when it was released in 2022. Made for a downright modest budget of $4.5 million, the film raked in $45 million at the box office, grabbing the attention of many enthused fright fans seeking new voices in the pop horror zeitgeist.

“Barbarian” was also one of many films in the emerging microgenre of Airbnb-related horror — Fearbnb? — wherein the protagonists check into a bed-and-breakfast, only to find something eerie or menacing about the house they’ve paid for. The genre also included films like “The Rental,” “Superhost,” “You Should Have Left,” and “Room for Rent.” Fearbnb movies were timely, tapping into the public’s uneasiness with a total lack of regulation in the upstart self-rental business; if no one is overseeing your Airbnb, who is to say the homeowner isn’t keeping a monster in their basement?

That’s certainly the case with “Barbarian.” The film is about an Airbnb that belongs to a P.O.S. movie star named AJ (Justin Long) who rarely checks on the property, and who is trying to cover up a recent sex crime he committed. After something untoward happens there (in an extended prologue), AJ does visit his bnb, only to discover that it has a basement he didn’t know about … and that an eight-foot tall woman, nicknamed the Mother, has been living down there for years. AJ is subsequently trapped in a long series of catacombs, trying to escape the creepy mute woman seeking to nurse him.

The Mother is barely seen for most of “Barbarian,” as she lurks in subterranean tunnels with no light. All we can really see is that she’s nude and monstrous. The Mother was played by actor Matthew Patrick Davis, and he is actually a conventionally handsome actor who was wrapped in an extensive monster suit. He spoke with No Film School back in 2022 about the role and his audition process.

The above picture is Matthew Patrick Davis from the 2019 TV series “Dwight in Shining Armor,” broadcast by Brigham Young University. Davis also notably played Ace Ventura in episodes of both “Tosh.0” and “The Sarah Silverman Program” in addition to portraying a bone monster named Kevin in “Henry Danger” and wearing a Xenomorph suit on an episode of “The Late Late Show with James Corden.” Because he is tall and has thin arms, Davis has often played monster roles despite being a skilled accordion player and, as mentioned, having a conventionally attractive face.

Davis’ audition to play the Mother was a little odd. He said that he spoke to a representative via a Zoom call about the possibility of playing a savage monster in “Barbarian.” He was to squat down and pretend to bite the head off a live rat, using food from his kitchen as a stand-in. The process made him feel a little silly. As he recalled:

“I was in my office. I was going to grab a sausage or something, but then there were pickles in my fridge, so I grabbed a pickle. And that was the move because it gave a good proper crunch. And then it gave a good Xenomorph drool situation. And so I had towels laid out on my floor, and it looked weird. I took my shirt off, it looked weird with me in shorts. So I was just in my underwear with a weird side-light, drooling pickle juice all over my floor as my small dog, Morty, was just sitting in his bed just looking at me as if nothing was out of the normal.”

Davis noted that his audition video was the weirdest thing he ever sent anyone via a Zoom call. It’s a good thing he did, as he was talking to the film’s booker.

To play the Mother, Davis says he was encouraged by his director to look up real-life cases of “feral” children who were raised without much supervision. Davis said he began to sympathize with the Mother and understood that she had been victimized by a cruel kidnapper who kept her hidden from the world. She wasn’t a monster, but merely acting in the way she had been raised. Once the “Barbarian” makeup artists started wrapping Davis in his rubber suit and makeup, the character really began to emerge. He continued: 

“Then the prosthetics happened, and then that brought me 50% all the way there. What a greater gift to immerse yourself into a role than to sit in a makeup chair for four hours and watch yourself slowly transform into someone that looks completely different than you. So it was the combination of those two things.” 

To rehearse, Davis skulked around the catacombs sets in between takes, knowing that the Mother knew how to get around in there. Davis wanted to be as familiar with his surroundings at the character. Davis, one can see, wanted to do his due diligence.

Since “Barbarian,” Davis has landed a few notable acting gigs, including playing four different characters in four different episodes of “American Dad!” He will also soon appear in a short film called “Mother’s Love,” although it is not a sequel to “Barbarian.” More than anything, though, Davis is a comedian, having appeared with the Upright Citizens Brigade and on “Comedy Bang! Bang!” Importantly, he was also in three episodes of “Days of Our Lives.”

Should there ever be a sequel to “Barbarian,” I’m sure the filmmakers will find a way to get Davis back.