Movie Review: “mother!” (Horror)
Film: mother! (2017)
Director: Darren Aronofsky
Actor(s): Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem
Genre: Psychological Horror
Runtime: 121 minutes
Country: United States
Language: English
Horror movies deal with themes of torture and the pain that’s inflicted on the mundane. They feed off of fear and give a lethal dosage of it to the audience as they leave home to let it haunt them for the rest of their day or the rest of their life. This feeling has been slithered into the hearts of many by films such as The Exorcist, The Shining and Hereditary. However, the one horror movie in recent memory that mentally broke me was a movie that changed the landscape of horror. That movie was mother!
To give an explanation of the plot would be to destroy any chance of seeing the film, because, to be honest, this isn’t a film. This is an experience. The film was labeled as a Psychological Horror, but it’s usage of it isn’t done on the characters of the story. Every horror movie has their characters go through the suffering and the blood-curdling torture of whatever genre-specificity the writers and directors have them go through. Darren Aronofsky has created something unusual, however. Instead of the characters going through it, we, the audience, are going through it. We’re the ones being tortured and dragged on the concrete through this entire 4D ride in a sense where it never stops and it keeps going without having a moment to fully take a break from it.
The characters of the film are, as the kids say these days, “their own kind of messed up.” The lead, played by Jenifer Lawrence (who’s character we’ll call mother), is the one who is our eyes and ears. Every room and corridor she waltzes into, we’re constantly on the edge, hoping nothing will come and hurl our way onto us. It’s moments like these that truly drive the nail into what the director has forced us into. mother! is not by any means the conventional horror film that we’ve conditioned ourselves to seeing. This is a brand new type of horror. This is a film that has us legitimately experiencing what a nightmare feels like. Or worse, what Hell feels like.
Grade: A
By Noah Peterlin