Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer

Directed by Darren Aronofsky

A couple find their lives turned upside down when a mysterious stranger turns up on their doorstep. Then his wife arrives, and things go really bad.

I’m not sure about the use of the lower-case ‘m’ in this movie’s title, but the exclamation mark at the end is well-deserved. A slang term for this punctuation character is a ‘screamer’ and there’s a hell of a lot of screaming going on in Darren Aronofsky’s paranoid horror thriller. Unfortunately, it has turned up in our cinemas with so much baggage and hysteria that it’s really hard to see it through fresh eyes, but here goes.

One of the problems with a mainstream studio release, starring a huge Hollywood lead, is that people have a certain expectation – in this case that it’s a Jennifer Lawrence film. And while she is excellent in this role, it’s not a mainstream film, and would have been better received if had been released as an arthouse flick from the likes of Lars Von Trier or David Lynch. I can understand why people have responded in the way that they have – it’s not the film that they expected or wanted to see.

No more BBFC-worrying than any other adult movie, this is an extreme experience, but far more psychological than visceral. There are moments of body horror, but the story is more interested in watching Jen’s trials and tribulations as she suffers the next challenge or indignity. The camera is either in her face, over her shoulder or showing her point of view, such is the movie’s single focus. Some films profess to be allegorical, with a hidden subtext. mother! does not have a subtext, as none of it is hidden. With even a limited knowledge of the Bible, it’s easy to spot the references, and many are sledgehammered into you.

Lawrence and Javier Bardem are great as the troubled couple, while Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer are the houseguests from hell. The scenes featuring these four, as the balance of power shifts and shatters, are by far the most effective, and at this stage you’re still not sure what’s going to happen next. When things do start to escalate, there’s a certain hysteria to the proceedings, which evoked both hysterical laughter and shocked gasps from fellow audience members.

Verdict: I applaud Paramount for having the guts to bankroll and release such an ambitious and challenging film. Only a mother! could love  such a beast, but amongst all the sturm and drang there’s actually some audacious filmmaking here – and you’re unlikely to see something like this again for a long time. 8/10

Nick Joy