All Her Fault review: Sarah Snook leads a devastating thriller about the terrifying fragility of parenthood

The familiar fear, delivered fresh

The premise is disarmingly ordinary: Marissa Irvine (Snook), a self-made wealth manager and mother, drives to a suburban home to pick up her son, Milo, from a scheduled playdate. But when the door opens, the woman standing there has never heard of Marissa, never heard of Milo, and has no idea why Marissa is at her doorstep. It’s a premise that horrifies precisely because it’s so mundane — an everyday scene ripped open to reveal a void where certainty should be.

The missing-child drama is a familiar genre, but here the tension is not driven by where the child is — at least not initially — but by the chilling possibility that no one else believes the child was ever there.

A still from All Her Fault

What separates All Her Fault from the crowd is its unsettling emotional intimacy. The show doesn’t rely merely on the mechanics of mystery; it is grounded in the psychology of panic. It captures the way horror settles first in the chest before it reaches the mind. The dread is domestic, recognisable, almost banal — and that is precisely why it works.

Suburban maze of secrets

As the search widens and the community circles around the missing boy, All Her Fault becomes a portrait of suburban facades — friends who aren’t really friends, marriages that hold together only from a distance, secrets that rot under the polished surfaces of stability.

Here, the series occasionally dips into familiar thriller tropes: mothers performing perfection, neighbours who know both too much and too little, the cracks in the curated calm of upper-middle-class life. Yet even when the show leans on convention, it does so with conviction. It isn’t asking who took the child? so much as what systems, what relationships, what histories allowed this to happen? That question is far more unsettling — and far more interesting.

The show is less interested in shock for shock’s sake than in charting the emotional cost of getting to the truth. Episode 5, in particular, is the series’ most affecting chapter, where fractures and loyalties within the family finally come into focus. That’s not to say the show is predictable — there are twists here, some sharp enough to genuinely catch you off guard, especially when it leans into the psychological terrain it’s been quietly preparing all along.

One of the series’ quietest strengths is its treatment of guilt. Motherhood in All Her Fault is not soft or romantic; it is performance, obligation, fear, resentment, and devotion, all intertwined. The show understands that guilt is a language parents — particularly mothers — speak fluently. Every interaction, whether with friends, spouses, or police officers, carries an undercurrent of silent judgment. This social pressure is almost as suffocating as the fear of loss itself.

Sarah Snook carries the weight

This is, unequivocally, Sarah Snook’s show. So much of All Her Fault depends on Marissa’s credibility. Is she being gaslighted by the world, or is her reality collapsing under the weight of grief? Snook plays Marissa with remarkable restraint and precision — a woman fraying at the edges but never giving in to despair. Her performance is built on micro-expressions: the tightening of a jaw, the swallow after a lie, the way her voice softens when she says her son’s name. She makes you root for her not because she’s perfect, but because she’s convincingly desperate.

If Succession showcased Snook’s mastery of emotional restraint as power, All Her Fault reveals her ability to embody powerlessness without losing agency. Even as Marissa spirals, she never becomes passive. The show may be framed as a mystery, but its true arc is Marissa’s descent — and what she finds at the bottom.

All Her Fault trailer:

Dakota Fanning, Jake Lacy, Michael Peña and the rest of the supporting cast deliver strong performances, even when their roles are more functional than fully realised. But All Her Fault was never meant to be an ensemble piece; it’s a slow collapse built around a single, riveting performance.

All Her Fault is a thriller that remembers the most terrifying crimes are not committed in the shadows, but in ordinary daylight — in neighbourhoods that look safe, in homes that promise security. It’s a portrait of motherhood as both love and burden, and a study of how thin the line really is between safety and chaos.

If you’ve ever held a child’s hand and lost sight for two seconds in a crowded place — your heart stopping, your breath collapsing — then you already understand the heartbeat of this show.

All Her Fault
All Her Fault Director – Minkie Spiro
All Her Fault Cast – Sarah Snook, Jake Lacy, Sophia Lillis, Michael Peña, Dakota Fanning, Abby Elliott
All Her Fault Rating – 3.5/5