A movie of Biblical pretentiousness...

Rating: 4/10 (20 September 2017)

So, I'm not a fan of Aronofsky. He is clearly a man who thinks he is far cleverer than he actually is. Mother shows this faux genius for the hack that he is.
Mother is an allegorical Bible class from a man who seems to have cherry-picked a few Bible characters and stories, put them into his scriptwriting software, and danced with glee at the resulting mess.
Mother is possibly one of the most ham-fisted, "my audience is dumb, so I must not be subtle" movies I have ever seen. There is no subtlety here. Aronofsky bludgeons you about the head with his allegory (more on that later) with all the zeal of Conan the Barbarian going about a murder spree.
In fact, the movie is essentially nothing but allegory. The story is nothing but allegory. There is no real plot. Nothing that resembles reality. In fact, it resembles more of an art-house movie than an actual film for the masses. And that brings me to my current, most-hated, aspect of the movie industry.... misrepresentation.
The trailers for this film paint a horror story in which poor Jennifer Lawrence and her writer husband are assailed by strangers and things get increasingly weird and dangerous. It is not a horror movie (well, it is horrible) but you get what I mean. People going into this expecting to see a by-the-numbers scare flick will have no idea what they are getting into. They will feel cheated. They will feel misled. They will be right.
Accordingly, the scorn poured by these people on to this film cannot, in good conscience, be felt to be unfair. When you open your tub of Hagen-Dasz and find a dead rat inside, it is hard not to be outraged by the deception.
The only reason I can fathom for why Hollywood does this kind of "Bait-and-Switch" trailer/film routine is because they just want more butts on seats. They really don't care about their audience if they try to mislead them in such a way. Money is the bottom-line here.
So, misrepresentation and ham-fistedness aside, is it any good? At best, it is.... meh! You can't really judge this as you would any other film because it doesn't conform to typical film standards. There is no plot, because it isn't based in reality. There is only allegory. Oh yeah, about that...
Wikipedia defines allegory as a metaphor whose vehicle may be a character, place or event, representing real-world issues and occurrences...largely because it can readily illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.
I would put it to you that an additional footnote should be added to this description, to wit: Allegory: A literary device often employed by those who like to think themselves smarter than the rest of us but which is usually so poorly implemented as to highlight their ineptitude.
So, Darren Aronofsky, you can take you terrible allegorical Biblical nonsense with a side order of Mother Nature and the death of religion and give me my money back. If I want to see a two hour "Look at what I made!" I'll visit my sister's house and let her small children show me the delights of fingerpainting. Truth is, that'd be a lot more fun, and probably way more "artistic" than this movie.
SUMMARY: Misrepresented nonsense. Brings a new meaning to the term "Bible Thumping". More pretentiously thin gruel served up as a main course of a film. Really not worth your time, or money.