Cripping the Monstrous-Feminine: Reading Disability in Recent Pregnancy Horror Films

Abstract: Referencing recent releases such as Immaculate, The First Omen , and Apartment 7A , this article returns to Barbara Creed’s monstrous-feminine and David Cronenberg’s The Brood to analyze how the female body, and the physically disabled children we see in these films, come under medicalized, and often pathologized, scrutiny by Western medicine and psychology. This paper analyzes the parallels between the treatment of motherhood and pregnancy and that of disability on screen, arguing for a refreshed understanding of Barbara Creed’s concept of the monstrous-feminine, with disability central to the construction and popularity of this figure. Fundamentally, the monstrous-feminine and the disabled monster both embody difference as terrifying and are, as such, cast out through the narrative of these films; both medicalized femininity and disability underpin the development of Hollywood movie monsters. Building on Creed’s chapter on The Brood , this paper brings in a Crip perspective, analyzing the alignment of Nola—acting as an example of the monstrous-feminine figure proposed here as the Mad mother—and her disabled children with literal and metaphorical disability, illustrating how this model—rooted, like most monsters, in teratology and physiognomy—continues in recent horror releases.