Darren Aronofsky’s “mother!” is the most shocking films I’ve seen this year, or have ever seen.

In “mother!” a poet struggling from writer’s block (Javier Bardem), and his wife (Jennifer Lawrence) live in a secluded house, living a simple life. Their way of life is interrupted when a man claiming to be a doctor (Ed Harris) shows up in the middle of the night, in search of a place to stay. But there’s something just… off about him. Anything past that would spoil what makes the movie great.

The entire film is solely from the perspective of Lawrence’s character, a majority of shots filmed closely to her, contributing to the sense of claustrophobia and tension as everything begins to fall apart. As everything unravels for her, the audience directly feels what she does. 

Both Bardem and Lawrence put on spectacular performances in the movie. Lawrence is the standout by far, with perhaps one of the best performances of her career. Despite Lawrence’s minimal dialogue, she is able effectively to tell us exactly what her character is going through from her facial expressions and body language.

“mother!” is a very slow burn, with tension building up as more guests show up at the house, all the way up to the end of the first act. Just when everything finally feels settled again, the second act explodes into absolute chaos, with one jaw-dropping, disturbing sequence after another.

The house that the poet and his wife live in is almost as important of a character as they are, and literally has a heartbeat. The sound design played a large part in this, with every creak that the house makes, every knock on the door, and every droplet of water putting the audience on edge.

The most important thing to know about the movie before seeing it is to be aware of the director’s style. Aronofsky is known for using metaphors heavily in his movies, such as in “The Fountain,” but I’m not sure if there is any substance to ‘mother!’ outside of the metaphors.

Had I not been aware ahead of time of Aronofsky’s heavy use of biblical allusions, I would not have enjoyed the movie, and would have been utterly confused the whole time. There were some more obvious clues throughout, but by the time I would have caught on, I would have been too far behind to understand anything else going on.

“mother!” is not for all audiences. It’s unsettling, confusing, relies far too heavily on biblical references for its own good, and can come off as pretentious. But if you can appreciate it for what it is, and not what it was advertised to be, you’ll enjoy your experience with “mother!”.

7.5/10

Pros:

• Immersive, claustrophobic cinematography

• Slow build to an explosive, sickening second act

Cons:

• Relies too heavily on metaphors, and may not be interpretable without some basic knowledge of the Christian Bible

• It is not the horror film it was marketed as

Many of the reviews around “mother!” have been based on the extremely misleading marketing. All of the trailers have portrayed ‘mother!’ as a horror film, and it is simply not that. The film has many components of what make a good horror movie, it’s claustrophobic, atmospheric, and deeply disturbing, but it was absolutely not a horror movie.

And this isn’t even the first time a movie this year has had negative audience reaction after similar marketing tactics. “It Comes At Night” was also heavily marketed as a horror film, and while it was closer to the genre, it only implied many of the horror elements that audiences were expecting.

At the time of this writing, “mother!” currently sits at 68% from critic reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and “It Comes At Night” sits at 89%, whereas they sit at 42% and 44% respectively with audiences. In the past couple of years, “Crimson Peak” and “The Witch” were marketed similarly, and were well received by critics, but both have low audience scores. Audiences simply are not happy about being mislead.

While Cinemascore’s grade should be taken with a grain of salt (Star Wars The Phantom Menace somehow received an A-), “mother!” is one of twelve movies to receive the “F” grading since it was founded in 1978. Negative reaction has been so bad that Megan Colligan, President of Worldwide Distribution and Marketing for Paramount Pictures, has released an official statement regarding it.

“This movie is very audacious and brave. You are talking about a director at the top of his game, and an actress at the top her game,” Colligan said. “They made a movie that was intended to be bold. Everyone wants original filmmaking, and everyone celebrates Netflix when they tell a story no one else wants to tell. This is our version. We don’t want all movies to be safe. And it’s okay if some people don’t like it.”

This raises the question, why release movies like these at all in theaters? If it requires Paramount to mislead audiences with the marketing to get audiences in theaters, maybe movies like “mother!” shouldn’t even have a theatrical release. Netflix is able to tell these riskier “stor[ies] no one else wants to tell,” because of the low risk associated with the experience for audiences.

For nearly the same price as a movie ticket, I am able to get a month’s worth of television and movies, and if I start a movie like “mother!” and find myself unhappy with the experience, I am simply able to turn it off and start another movie. Netflix is able to release critically acclaimed movies like “Okja” and “Beasts of No Nation” without fear of loss on investment if they don’t do well in the box office because of how low risk it is for audiences.

Regardless of the controversy behind the film and it’s marketing, it’s extremely rare anymore for a movie like “mother!” to do well at the box office. Outside of the standard Avengers, Star Wars, or Transformers blockbuster style franchise, most movies barely recoup their production budget. If the average movie-goer is only able to see one movie every couple of months, they are more likely to go with the safe choice. That is, the movie that is most enhanced by watching on the silver screen.

“mother!” opened with $7.5 million at the box office last weekend, but after the first wave of reviews, it will almost certainly do considerably worse this weekend, and it is unlikely that it will gross much more than its $30 million budget, if it makes it past that at all. The combination of the misleading marketing, and the high opportunity cost for the audience are certainly to blame for that, and this whole fiasco will hopefully serve as a case study for production companies in the future, so they can avoid making the same mistakes as Paramount.