Review: Tantrum

3/5 stars

Tantrum, by Rachel Eve Moulton (2025)

TW: Violence, cannibalism, child abuse

Part I is called Temper, and introduces the main character, Thea, who is a wife, mother of two boys - 5 and 3-years old - and of an infant girl, Lucia. They live off the grid in the New Mexico desert. She loves her husband and kids, but is beginning to feel trapped in her life, particularly because she just knows that something is not right with Lucia, and hasn't shared this with anyone else. But Lucia's strange and scary behaviors are starting to be more and more difficult to ignore or hide... like ripping the head off of a live chicken with her bare hands, smiling happily while covered in blood. Or is Thea imaging things? Is she making a big deal out of nothing? Or... is her daughter a literal demon?

Part II, Wean, delves deeper into Thea's background - her alcoholic, controlling, mean-spirited mother, and the abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother's many boyfriends through the years. Thea knows her own childhood was horrible, but that was all due to neglect, instability, and her mother's selfishness... right? Or are there more similarities between mother and child - Thea's mother, Thea, and Lucia - than she's ready to admit?

In Part III, Latch, we get reveal after reveal. Things go off the rails for a while, in a very creative and fun way. It's unclear if some of the more extreme events are imagined, or we're in magical realism territory, or we've descended into a full-on horror story. Either way, people are monsters, and monsters are monsters, and sometimes monster-monsters are less scary than people ones.

I thought this was clever and interesting, with wacky but relatable characters. Even the husband, who sort of seems like a boring Ken-doll, ends up being commendable, and all three of Thea's kids are cute, even the demon-baby one. She really is trying her best, after all.

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UP NEXT: The Society of Unknowable Objects, by Gareth Brown