Heavy Ingredients Severely Undercooked

Rating: 2/10 (21 September 2017)

I was in the right mood for a smart horror film, they used to be my favorite kind of film until they sort of disappeared, the smart part not the horror. I'm a huge fan of Polanski's The Tenant - it terrified me more than any other film, followed shortly by 2 other Roman Polanski masterpieces, Repulsion and Rosemary's Baby. There are others - Nicolas Roeg's Don't Look Now, Martin Donovan's Apartment Zero, Alex De La Iglesias's La Comunidad, Davin Lynch's Eraserhead and Blue Velvet in particular. Most of Luis Bunuel's work and a few others. Mother! reminded me somehow of some of them but it was just like a tease that didn't really matured into anything.Here everything is outrageously on the nose but not in a phenomenal Ken Russell way but in a rather obvious, unconvincing, "look at me" kind of thing. I love Jennifer Lawrence but in Mother! she wakes up at the beginning of the film and she's already panicky. Please, don't misunderstand me, I'm not suggesting a prequel! No, clearly Darren Aronfski gave the audience too much credit or not enough because for me, as a member of the audience, left me cold. I may have winced at the sight of blood but it didn't frighten me. The "wound" on the floor? Remember the hole in the wall of "The Tenant"? Maybe it's my fault. I've seen too many films and young audiences haven't. I've read some of the positive comments and I imagine they are from very young people who feel, quite rightly, they been given something besides Marvel and they have. I only hope they use it as a gateway to discover some of the "old" films. And as for Mother! what I enjoyed was the totally unexpected turn by Michelle Pfeiffer. Dark and funny, mocking or better still, paying tribute to Ruth Gordon - I imagine. I left the theater with a desperate need to revisit Rosemary's Baby and you know what? I will. So after all said and done, thank you.