Riveting!

Rating: 8/10 (8 December 2017)

The film is about a couple (played by Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence) living in a solitary house, the husband being a poet in creative crisis, with his wife wholeheartedly supporting him and trying to keep their home clean and tidy. One day strangers start to show up at their house, first an older man (Ed Harris), then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), then their two sons, which then leads to some conflict, and things start to become more and more strange and dark. The wife of the poet doesn't understand why all these people keep appearing at their home, and why her husband is so welcoming and emphatetic to them, while being cold and distant to her.
Mother! has elements of drama, horror, mystery, psychological thriller and social commentary. It puts you in a position where you see things from Jennifer Lawrence's perspective, not being sure what and why is happening around her, and feeling that something is definitely not right in that house and with those people. The movie has an unsettling atmosphere, and eventually (at around the 90 minute mark) you realize that nothing in it is what it appears to be, the film is an allegory - of possibly not just one but a variety of things. Which is probably one of the main reasons why many people don't like it; because when things are somewhat revealed, they feel like they were tricked into believing that the movie was something else. (That's actually the reason why I gave it an 8 instead of a 9, but I still like it a lot, I actually think this is one of the best films of the year).
A huge shout-out to Jennifer Lawrence whom I never thought would impress me with her acting as much as she did in this one. Her performance in Mother! is so delicate, so emotional, so real, that I couldn't but feel sympathy for her character throughout the film. She is amazing in this!
If you saw The Fountain (another movie from Aronofsky), and you liked it, Mother! might be another one for you. It has similar themes, but goes even further in being abstract and different from mainstream Hollywood cinema.