Movie Review - Mother!

Mother! *½ (out of 5) (R) Any time a movie - even one that’s supposed to be a horror flick - serves up such a pile of Oscar and other awards and nominations as these headliners have collectively amassed, expectations run high. That makes what would otherwise be merely disappointing feel like more of a disaster than the grisly fates of its on-screen casualties. Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer in front of writer/director Darren Aronofsky’s cameras portend a much better product than what they’ve delivered.

Bardem’s a cult-favorite poet, whose rambling, isolated family home was mostly destroyed in a fire. His young bride, Lawrence, has spent months rehabbing the place, while he’s been brooding with severe writer’s block. There’s love between them, but we learn that there’s a disconnect on the emotional line that binds.

Harris shows up with a story about how he got there that doesn’t quite pass an objective smell test. Bardem wants him to stay; Lawrence doesn’t. Pfeiffer, as Harris’ wife, arrives the next day. Same responses from the putative hosts; more reasons to smell rats. Other folks just keep on a comin’, as the creepy setup of the early going - mostly about what dark forces may be lurking in or under those creaky old walls - descends into chaos and, ultimately, drivel. Even the gory stuff that earns its rating seems spliced from a different movie than the one we started watching.

The four principals strut their stuff adroitly, but pointlessly unpleasant characters sour the palate, no matter how well portrayed. It’s the script that lets them (and us) down. The story literally and figuratively opens the door to a seemingly major plotline before it dies of neglect. Maybe they’re saving that for the DVD extras. Even without it, the thing is too long, and self-destructs from its own excesses in the second half. Like the Atlanta Falcons in the last Super Bowl.

***Semi-spoiler alert*** There is a twist ending that supposedly ties up some dangled threads, but it’s too little, too late and too incomplete.

Also, a key premise of the tale is that Bardem’s character is so adored that legions of rabid fans and media go bonkers over his writing. That makes the climactic scenes even more absurd and gratuitous than they might have been in another context. No “poet” in the last century, or so, has been so lionized without a band, or at least a back beat, behind him. (9/15/17)