Allegorical, jarring and bound to be divisive.

Rating: 7/10 (17 September 2017)

Paramount Pictures deserves to be panned (and roundly) for advertising this as some sort of home invasion horror flick, as it is nothing of the sort. Our showing here in Gloucester had a sparse crowd of about 70 or so people, which works out to its poor box office returns.
The film itself is a huge religious and environmental allegory. Javier Bardem is "Him", the creative force stalled and wed to "Mother", the world gifted to him and currently barren, as she has to fuel his creation through inspiration. Him needs outside inspiration as well, and this is where Man begets Woman, and so on. It comes off as slightly pretentious, but it does work. We move through early biblical works and side warnings about humans lacking care for the environment, and then sashay into various commentaries about fame, fandom overrunning celebrities, people in general being callous and selfish and so on.
"mother!' takes a hard turn in its last segment, but you have been warned when Mother says she is going to "prepare for the Apocalypse", and that's what you get, in all its horror, violence, selfishness and degradation. Eventually Mother (Earth, Nature), is pushed to her limits and burns the whole area down, only to be rebuilt.
I gave this film a 7 for its use of sound (no music anywhere, just ambient sounds and natural sounds) and Bardem playing the creative, selfish force to a tee. Lawrence is an observant force, trying to preserve herself and ultimately vengeful when people destroy everything carelessly. The final sequence is absolutely incredible, covering everything from Abu Ghraib to refugees to riots to wars to dark religiosity and so on.
That said, this is NOT a movie that should have been released to the masses, but instead given a small, art house release. It was mislabelled and there is simply too much going on here to serve as popcorn fodder. On this point, I often felt as I was the only EATING popcorn from my high perch in the theater, and the sound was intrusive on the surroundings. Yes, really. See this movie with an open mind, bear in mind its intense religious allegories and go from there.