****mild spoilers ahead****
I first heard of mother! through its rather grotesquely goregous poster, shown above. It shows Jennifer Lawrence in a lovely white dress, surrounded by some plants while she takes her own heart out of her body. It's a interesting juxtaposition between a obvious beauty and a chilling horror. On a first viewing, you're really not sure how to feel about it. And once you finish watching the film itself, you feel the exact same way.
mother! (exclamation mark included) revolves around Jennifer Lawrence's character 'Mother' renovating a house she recently moved into with Javier Bardem's 'Him', wanting to make it a paradise. However, when Bardem invites some unexpected guests into the house, Mother's house renovations are put on hold for a little while.
In reviewing mother!, the one thing I noticed more than anything was just how tense it was, and not just when it needed to be, but throughout. From the moment it begins, through its most jaw-droppingly horrific moments and in its grand finale, mother! always has this overarching tension that always leaves you on-edge with a constant feeling that anything could happen. This works well with the enigmatic nature of the film, with neither the trailers nor brief synopsis giving you much of an idea as of what to expect. This may be because while a lot of horror films have iconic themes or signature scores, mother! rejects all of that in a bold move for a film placed in such a music-specific genre, creating tension through only silence and the voices of the house's uninvited guests as they react to the shocking events that gradually occur as 'Him' becomes more generous.
This context also allows mother! to shift its focus towards its use of the most abstract filmmaking techniques to tell its story, making it a very visual piece, grabbing your attention before it even begins. When we're introduced to 'Him', for example, what comes before isn't a idyllic, romanticised idea of what he is to Lawrence's character, but a jump-scare, appearing behind Lawrence after we see her walking around her dimly lit home looking for him - with no sound to be heard. Speaking of mother's main duo, it goes without saying that their acting is astonishing. The film goes through a lot of stylistic changes in a very small amount of time, particularly in its second half, yet Lawrence and Bardem are consistent, ablling to quickly adapt their characters through every one of these changes and have us feel a multitude of emotions for and against their characters in just two hours.
These changes, however, are the reason why mother! was the most polarising film of 2017. As great as the acting, visuals and overall spectacle was throughout these changes I couldn't help but feel as if the second half of the film was much harder to follow and, in a way, rushed. While there is a justifiable reason for this, which unfortunately goes into major spoiler territory, that reason isn't obvious until you do further research into the film post-viewing. Where the first half of a film is a delicate love story, the second is a chaotic slice of hell. This second half coming out of almost nowhere doesn't help much either, especially when the pacing of the first leads you to believe this is a film with a slower, more relaxed pace - before jolting your attention awake with a cinematic defibrillator as it moves into its latter stage.
Overall, mother! is a very, very complicated film. It's demanding of its viewer to take in, process and understand its every nuance and then translate all of that back to uncover its deeper meaning. But, on the other hand, the way it presents all of these details is unique and unlike anything I've seen before, let alone a horror film.