Awash with absurdity, Mother! just tries too hard...

Rating: 5/10 (29 April 2019)

Mother! is a film that tries to pose questions to its audience and intentionally leaves them unanswered. For the most part this is acceptable, but there are several scenes that are not tied well enough together in the narrative - and this leads to disappointment - the scene with the cellar door springs to mind here.
The movie, is okay, but I can't help feeling it's trying to be bigger than its boots - it try's to weave mystery, suspense and horror into a seamless blend but ultimately blurs the boundaries between the genres so much so that you lose focus. It seems like it's crying out to be an artistic masterpiece, but perhaps trying a little too hard.
The narrative is convoluted - it's not super difficult to follow but many of the questions that it leaves open ended answers to are unavailing - the questions that it needs to answer to make a decent amount of sense it just doesn't, and the questions it does not answer just seem pointless.
It's not absolutely terrible, and some people will love it. I however did not. For these reasons I consider it be worth about 5 stars, which is average - but I can see how one could argue for or against the film at least 1 star in either direction. I don't think it's worth any less than 4 stars but it certainly is not worthy of more than 6.
5* - Average