The horror film Jennifer Lawrence said went “too far”
2017 was a good year for horror fans. Hollywood delivered Get Out, as well as It Comes At Night, the It reboot and The Ritual – all of which had something new and exciting to offer the genre. 2017 also saw the release of a rather intense psychological horror that, in retrospect, Jennifer Lawrence thinks went “too far”.
However, she should have seen it coming. Before the New York premiere screening of Mother!, director Darren Aranofsky gave a pre-emptive apology for what was about to unfold. “You’re laughing and smiling now, but you’re all going to really hate me in about an hour and a half,” he told the audience at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. “So the first thing I want to do is apologise.”
Mother! tells the story of an unnamed couple who move into a crumbling Victorian Mansion in the countryside with the intention of renovating the property. The tranquillity of their setup is spoiled when they receive an unexpected guest, a stranger, who is welcomed by Him and given a room upstairs. The next day, the stranger’s wife shows up, followed by their two sons. As more and more guests are invited inside, Mother tries to establish why her husband is being so accommodating.
The plot is a real slow burner, and its intensity begins as a dim flicker but ends as a roaring flame. One especially harrowing moment comes after Mother gives birth to her son. Left unattended for a moment, the infant is taken by Him and given to the huge crowd who now occupy the house. Unable to support the weight of its own head, the child’s neck snaps. On watching the film for the first time, Lawrence told Variety: “I was really shaken. My first reaction was that we took it too far. But then after the images died down a little bit, [the movie’s] exactly what we’re supposed to be doing and what we need to be doing. We have a message and if we watered it down to make people comfortable then what’s the point? Why even make it?”
The project was a challenge for everyone involved, especially Aronofksy, who emerged with a finished product in a matter of months. On release, the film garnered comparisons to Rosemary’s Baby, but the director was keen to leave the overall message open to interpretation. “The same pattern and rhythm isn’t interesting to me so I wanted to take one emotion and make it into a movie,” he said at the New York premiere. “A lot of people call it different things: it’s rage, insatiability and it’s for you guys to decide what it is.”
