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Guest columnist Sarah Sinn discusses how horror films helped her process the grief of losing her mother
Grief is universal. We all experience it. We all must deal with it. We all have to process it and face it. Some people go to therapy. Others go to church. Some get in touch with nature. Me? I turn to horror.
I lost my mom in 2018 to cancer. Unfortunately, she had a very rare form of cancer (peritoneal cancer, the lining of the abdomen). A cancer so rare that, when my mom was diagnosed, it was automatically considered stage 4 cancer. She fought for a year. She even got to ring the bell when she was done with her chemo and things started to look positive. She was going to live. She had beat cancer. I was going to be able to keep my mom. But the universe had other plans. The year 2018 started and she started to decline, she ended up in the hospital, and at one point said “I’m done with hospitals. I want to die at home. I want to be with my family with whatever remaining life I have left.” And she came home and we had hospice come to the house to take care of her. My mom didn’t give up. She was a fighter, a warrior. She just accepted the fact that she wanted to live her remaining life surrounded by family and not have to suffer anymore. On May 1st, 2018, she passed away. I was devastated. I lost my best friend. My hero. My mom. My daughter was only 2.5 years of age, and it broke my heart knowing she was going to grow up without her Chitsh (grandmother in Chinook).
It felt like my whole world just fell apart (my ex-husband moved out a month before my mom died, knowing she was dying of cancer. But that’s another story). My mom was my best friend. Don’t get me wrong, we had our moments. We had our fights and times we didn’t speak to each other for weeks, months. But eventually, once I got into my later 20s, we apologized for the things we had done and said to one another in our past and moved forward. Even though we had our tough times, I couldn’t have asked for a better mother. So, when she left this earth, I was crushed.
What was I to do? In one month, I became a single mom and lost one of the most important people to me. I was in deep grief. How did I deal with this grief? Process this grief? Face my grief? I turned to horror movies.
I have been watching horror movies since I was 5 years old. My mom was a horror fan (she watched them with her father, I watched them with her, and my daughter watches them with me). Before I ever watched my first horror movie, my mom would tell me horror movies as bedtime stories. I would ask her, “Mommy, tell me a scary story.” And she would. Once I saw my first horror movie (Friday the 13th, age 5, with my older brothers and sister and, yes, my mom was OK with this), those horror movie/bedtime stories (after she told me them), she would say “And it’s a movie. Do you wanna watch it?” And I would say, “Yes!” With such excitement and my mom would rent the movie and we would watch it together. Horror was our thing. So, when I was grieving the death of my mom … horror was there for me.
There were two movies I was drawn to after my mother passed away: Return of the Living Dead 3 and The Final Girls. Let’s start with Return of the Living Dead 3. Or as I like to call it, Romeo and Juliet … with zombies! Very quickly, I do have a podcast (Sinnful Sarah’s Horror Menagerie) where I take a deep dive, psychological analysis approach to horror movies. And when I covered Return of the Living Dead 3, one thing I picked up is the idea of “prolonging life.” Sometimes people refuse to pull the plug on a brain dead loved one. People push for surgeries if it means a couple more months with a loved one. People do whatever they can to keep their loved ones with them just a little bit longer. Prolonging life. My mom once told me, “People will wait to die until they know their loved ones will be OK. They will not die until they know everyone will be alright and has accepted the fact that they are dying.” Again, another form of prolonging life: holding on to hope they will survive … not accepting the inevitable…not able to let go.
A couple of days before my mom died, my dad came downstairs, looked at me and said, “I don’t understand why she won’t just go in peace. I’ve accepted she’s going to pass. I’m going to miss her, but I know she just needs to go peacefully. Why is she still holding on?’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him, but it was me. I wasn’t ready to let go. I wasn’t ready to say goodbye to my mom. I couldn’t accept that she was dying. I was the one prolonging her life and my mom knew it. The day I went upstairs and finally said my goodbyes to her, ending with, “Mom I’m going to miss you. But I will be OK,” she died a couple of hours later. Just like Curt did to Julie when he exposed her to Trioxin 245 in order to bring her back to life after she died in a motorcycle crash, he was prolonging her life. He was letting her suffer. He wasn’t able to let go. And, yes, at the end of the movie, they die together in a pit of fire, finally able to end her suffering. I latched on to this because I too wasn’t able to let go. But in the end, I did, I said goodbye to my mom, and she was able to pass away in peace. I related to this movie. It helped me realize that many of us have a hard time letting go, prolonging a loved one’s life. But in the end, we need to accept the inevitable, we need to let go and let our loved ones go. Let them move on, even though it’s hard on us, it’s best for them. We don’t want them to suffer. We want them to move onto the spirit world peacefully.
Let’s move on to The Final Girls (a movie centered around grief), another movie that I covered on my podcast, showed the viewers something we all want when we lose a loved one: A chance to say goodbye one last time while also teaching the viewers a valuable lesson. I was drawn to this movie because, in a way, I could deal with my grief and live through the character of Max, who lost her mom in a car accident. When Max is pulled into the movie, Camp Bloodbath (an 80s Slasher movie her mother starred in) she gets the chance to see her mom one last time. And better yet, she gets to say goodbye to her one last time. Something I desperately wish I could have done … just have one more moment with my mother to tell her how much I loved her, how much I was going to miss her, and say goodbye to her one last time. However, while giving this moment to the viewer it also teaches us that we keep our loved ones alive through our memories. As long as we hold on to those memories, pictures, videos, etc., they are never truly gone. All Max has to do is pop in the movie Camp Bloodbath and her mother is there, on the TV, for Max to see.
Her mother may have passed on but she isn’t truly gone, she is immortalized through that movie. And whenever Max feels sad or lonely, she can put that movie on and her mom is there. As too with my own mother. Before she passed, she did a record-a-book for my daughter Hemera (Goodnight Moon, one my mother read to her every night). Like Max, all I have to do is open that book and there’s my mother’s voice, immortalized within this recording. She may have passed away but she is still there, in that book, for me to listen too whenever I feel sad or lonely. The movie, The Final Girls, helped me process my grief by helping me understand that we all want that one last goodbye with a lost loved one, that I was not alone in my grief while also allowing me to live through Max while she processed her own grief. But most of all, this movie made me realize the importance of keeping my mother’s memory alive. And whenever I feel sad and lonely, all I have to do is open Goodnight Moon, I get to hear her voice, and she is there.
Horror movies helped me through the waves of grief when I lost my mom and Return of the Living Dead 3 and The Final Girls were the movies I was drawn to the most because they were the most relatable to my situation. Yet, there are many, many horror movies out there that may help others through their grief such as Dark was the Night, The Babadook, Happy Death Day, and The Ritual, just to name a few. Each one of these movies discuss grief in a different way whether it’s the grief of losing a child and the guilt one may feel thinking it was their fault (Dark was the Night); The grief of losing your husband the day your child was born (The Babadook); The grief of losing your mom in your younger years when you need her the most (Happy Death Day); or the grief of losing a friend and the guilt you feel because you didn’t do anything to prevent it (The Ritual). Horror movies helped me at a time when I needed it the most … when I lost my mom to cancer. And I truly believe that horror can help anyone process their grief because they are not afraid to touch on the subject of grief, they are relatable, and most of all, they allow us a safe space to just let those feelings out. Horror is more than just what’s on the surface. Horror is healing.
Meet Sarah Sinn!
I currently live in Vermont, the state I was raised in, and I have a beautiful daughter named Hemera. I work full-time as the lead teacher of an infant room at a childcare center. Hobbies of mine are photography and cosplay (both me and my daughter). My signature cosplay is Herbert West (Re-Animator is my favorite movie) but I also cosplay as Tiffany Valentine, Quint from Jaws, Frank-n-Furter, Freddy, and soon I hope to show off my Kelly Meeker (from Halloween 4) cosplay I have been working on.
I am the host of Sinnful Sarah’s Horror Menagerie. A podcast where I dive deep, a psychological analysis to horror movies. I truly believe there is more to horror than what’s on the surface. Once you peel back those layers, there’s so much more going on. Horror is relatable. I believe that “horror is healing,” and can help many of us through various traumas and whatever life throws at us (it has helped me many times). I also believe that because there are so many subgenres within horror that everyone can enjoy the horror genre. They just have to find the subgenre that fits them. My personal favorite subgenre? Slasher flick. Give me a good ‘ol ’80s slasher any day.
I have an AA in Liberal Studies and Early Childhood Education and I graduated May of 2025 with a BA in Psychology. My goal is to pursue a Masters in the Psychology of Horror Movies. I want to teach at a University or film school. I want to educate people on the horror genre and show them that’s there more to these movies than just monsters, masked killers, gory kills, and final girls. Horror is healing, touches on Psychology and mental health issues, are social commentaries, reflect the fears of society (especially in the decade they were made in), are relatable, and most of all that horror is healing.
You can follow Sarah on X (the platform formally known as Twitter) at @SinnfulM and @Sinnful_redhead.
