mother! - Movie Review

While I have been getting more and more into horror movies these past few years I'm not a hardcore horror fan. I still have plenty of slashers and monster horrors to get through before I can say I'm a real horror fan. But the type of horror that really fascinates me, the one that got me hooked onto the genre, is psychological horror. The Babadook, while having a monster in it, is so terrifying because what's really scary is the depiction of a broken and how it break even more. That film left me a changed man. But I think I found another psychological horror has left its mark upon me just as much: mother!

This is the story of a couple living in a house in the woods/ plains. The husband (Javier Bardem) is writer/ poet who is having massive writers block while the wife (Jennifer Lawrence) is basically building up the house, making it nice, and keeping everything together. But one day a random man is knocks on their door and basically invites himself in. Then that man's wife comes in, their sons, and soon a bunch of other people and the main wife is trying to keep everything in her home together. Meanwhile she finds out the house is bleeding and some kind of heart and other things going on as well. And yes, none of the characters have a defining name. It's weird, but there's a reason behind it.

I haven't experienced a film like this in a long while. I remember seeing the trailers for this movie years ago and I thought this was going to be a Lovecraftian story, something like The Dunwich Horror or The Shadow Over Innsmouth. I feel like I kind of got somewhat because eventually the film went so dark and horrific I was backing way from the screen like I was watching people eat a baby right in front of me. But mostly I got something different... watching this film I felt a sense of violation I haven't felt from any film before. That's what's really scary about this movie because I was watching a woman see her house invaded and ripped apart while her husband was almost oblivious to what's going on. I felt powerless for the wife, or as she's called in the credits, "mother." But it's secretly also displaying themes that, upon realization, hit me like a ton of bricks. I'll explain more in detail in a bit and I will have a bit of spoilers in this review.

Let me first say that Jennifer Lawrence was fantastic in this movie. Her character had to put up with so much shit that I definitely wouldn't have been able to handle. So is kind of innocent and powerless throughout most of the movie and I instantly felt for her. Javier Bardem, who played the terrifying Anton Chigurh in No Country for Old Men was... pretty good, though I hated his character with a passion. He says he loves Jennifer Lawrence's character, but he's also so wrapped up in his work that it made my blood boil. I wanted to reach through the screen and just strangle him because he just let these random people in their home. But Lawrence puts on such a great performance that I just kept my eyes locked on the screen. The rest of the cast did their roles well enough, but I feel, when thinking about the themes of the movie, that they didn't have too much to them other than a purpose to ruin Jennifer Lawrence's home. But again, that ties into the themes of the movie and I'll get into that soon.

This does lead me to my first flaw of the movie and that's the cinematography. I get what the director, Darren Aronofsky, was trying to do by keeping us locked into the scene, but even so I felt like there were so many average/ below-average close up shots that I was shaking my head a bit. It also felt like a lot of the shots in the movie were hand-held with nothing to stabilize the cameras. Now there were some excellent long shots that dragged on and built up some tension, along with some great shots that weren't up in your face. When it wasn't fixed on a person's face and was allowed to open up and view more of the world it captured a lot of the big moments. As the film progressed I started to ignore how close these close-up shots were because of crazy the story was, but for most of the movie that camera work kind of bothered me.

I do find this film is definitely going to be (and definitely was when it came out) divisive to viewers. The first third of the film I was just in a bad mood because of how Jennifer Lawrence's character was mistreated. But then the 2nd third of the movie things are a bit calmer and it seems it's all going well, then the husband becomes obsessed with fame again in the last third and things going absolutely bat-shit insane. There is this violence throughout the movie that'll turn people away and I get that, I felt like things were not making any sense and I was trying to cobble together reasons as to why our female lead was basically ignored and treated so poorly and having her home taken over and destroyed. There was a sense of powerlessness in me because if I was in the movie I would have gone out of my way to help her out.

But some time after the movie had ended I realized what the film is about. We're going into some spoilers now, just a heads up. In the film, "mother" symbolizes Mother Earth, the husband/ Him is God, the house is our planet or the universe, and the the random people are just... humans. The humans are continually invading and taking away all the nice things of from the house, whether its physical stuff like vases or painting, as well as the non-physical stuff like a sense of comfort, peace, and tranquility. I mentioned early on saying that there was a moment in the film where I backed away from the screen like I was watching people eating a baby... that actually does happen. The wife/ mother gets pregnant at around half-way in the film, gives birth, refuses to give it to Him once its born because of how he's asshole, but falls asleep and he gives it to the people and they're all happy.

But they then accidentally snap its neck, then soon after rip it apart and eat it up like some sort of Christian ritual. Once she sees that "mother" snaps and just starts to kill these monsters before almost dying when the humans fight back. Him saves her and asks her to forgive the people for what they did, but she then runs away into the basement, punctures and oil tank, and lights the whole house on fire. I was hoping the movie would end there, but apparently Him doesn't die from the fire while "mother" does and he takes her heart out and puts this odd stone back on a pedestal in his office (which was shown at the start of the movie as well). After that the whole house and forest around it resets to its fixed state and a new "mother" is created and wakes up from the bedroom.

This film is an allegory of the rape of nature that humans continually do to our planet and God, since he's all about creation and being loved, continually asks "mother" to forgive them because that way they'll love Him more. At the end of the movie, and I'm paraphrasing, mother tells Him that he never loved her, but loved how people gave Him their love. It reminds me a lot of the God from the series Preacher because both versions have him very human traits, from jealous to pleasure (for the Preacher version we can include pleasure in a very sexual way too (because he's gross and loves weird a Dalmatian gimp suit)) to wanting to be loved no matter what negative effects it gives to other people. But there's a lot more than just this as themes. We also take away the ideas of fame going to people's heads, the dangers of following a cult or religion with too much passion, how life can be reborn, and more. So much can be taken out of mother!.

Now I didn't interpret the God stuff until thinking it over more and watching a few interpretation videos online about the film. This could also turn away some people because I'm not a religious person, but some people might see the themes of this movie are shoved in their faces. The reviews I later watched on the movie had the reviewers most often all the biblical comparisons, so it might feel too obvious or on the nose what the film is trying to say. There's a lot more than what I've said and while I didn't catch most of it while I watched the film I feel that there's so much in it that I feel a bit iffy on the whole thing. This is especially true with the first family that comes to the house because they have two sons that fight each other like Cain and Abel in the Bible and once they and the rest of the family leave they never are mentioned again.

Additionally, in my subjective opinion, I hated the ending to this movie. This cycle of rebirth is going to repeat itself because Him/ God is trying to find that one out of a billion-trillion paths in which things don't go wrong, so every version of "mother" is going to keep suffering because Him a jackass with their stuffed up their own ass! Saying that though, I really liked how the movie did portray how humans continually destroy nature without giving back properly or giving it proper respect and space. It's something we, if future generations are going to survive on this planet, must do in order to keep the planet working. It felt so impactful and I you see how "mother nature" would feel from all the harm humans have done to the planet. It's heartbreaking to think about it...

I walked into mother! with a set of expectations and got a lot more that what I originally planned for. Throughout the film I was wrathful, joyful, horrified, and traumatized. As time goes on I see this film is most likely going to age well because, similar to films like The Lighthouse, there are so many ways to interpret this film, and that gets people to talk about it. This film isn't for everyone, especially with how much it will f%ck with your emotions (I needed a hug after the movie ended, I was so distraught), but it's so... different and powerful that I definitely recommend this movie, though of course with a big warning.

Tentative Score: 7.75/10

Definitive Score: 8.25/10

I'm going to remember this movie for a long time. It just blew me away and I almost felt violated because I felt so helpless as everything started to fall into ruins. And being helpless is something I never want to be when it comes to the greater good.