From the idiotic drug-addict hokum Requiem for a Dream to the overrated, overwrought and over-hyped Black Swan, which I called “a lavishly staged Repulsion in toe shoes,” the films of wack job Darren Aronofsky have shown a dark passion for exploring twisted souls in torment. But nothing he’s done before to poison the ozone layer prepared me for mother!, an exercise in torture and hysteria so over the top that I didn’t know whether to scream or laugh out loud. Stealing ideas from Polanski, Fellini and Kubrick, he’s jerrybuilt an absurd Freudian nightmare that is more wet dream than bad dream, with the subtlety of a chainsaw. 
 
 This delusional freak show is two hours of pretentious twaddle that tackles religion, paranoia, lust, rebellion, and a thirst for blood in a circus of grotesque debauchery to prove that being a woman requires emotional sacrifice and physical agony at the cost of everything else in life, including life itself. That may or may not be what Aronofsky had in mind, but it comes as close to a logical interpretation as any of the other lunk-headed ideas I’ve read or heard. The reviews, in which a group of equally pretentious critics frustratingly search for a deeper meaning, are even nuttier than the film itself. Using descriptions like “hermeneutic structure,” “phantasmagoric fantasia,” “cinematic Rorsach test” and “extended scream of existential rage,” they sure know how to leave you laughing. 
 
 Although you will spend most of the painful, torturous and stressful two hours it takes to survive mother! trying to figure out what it’s all about, I advise you to ignore the reviews entirely and make up your own fantasy. One critic says it’s a satire on the chaos the dysfunctional world has been turned into by Donald Trump. Another says the title refers to the role played by Jennifer Lawrence, the director’s current personal squeeze and cinematic muse, whom he slobbers over in endlessly annoying close-ups that emphasize her flaws and rob the viewer of the power of self-discovery. One reviewer says she plays the quintessential Earth mother who works feverishly to restore balance to a planet Earth that is being constantly torn apart by wickedness and savagery. I love the review that compares the movie to the “lancing of a boil.” They all insist mother! is a metaphor for something, although they are not quite sure what it is. The only thing I agree with is that the film is indeed original. I admired the camerawork, the wide-angle close-ups of flaring nostrils, and the pandemonium of the crowd scenes in the second half of the film when it goes haywire and insanity reign. It’s an odd sensation to still remember moments of technical brilliance in a movie I never want to see again. The actress’s face occupies a full 66 minutes of the 120-minute running time, so I’ve seen quite enough of her, too. 
 
 Lawrence, a woman restrained almost to the point of madness, lives in a creepy, remote mansion in the middle of nowhere with her husband (Javier Bardem), a rugged poet who refuses to give her a baby or even take her to bed. (Can a sensitive poet with erectile function also be an alpha male? Just asking.) As she grows more understandably neurotic every day, the house is invaded by nameless strangers (Ed Harris and gorgeous Michelle Pfeiffer, looking unbelievably haggard) who interrupt the woman’s idyllic life with rude questions about sex, marriage, and why she isn’t trying harder to procreate. Every effort to throw them out is thwarted by her husband, who craves attention and idolatry from his fans. Then their two sons arrive, bringing violence and mayhem. Dishes smash. Furniture is demolished. A murder is committed. A mysterious bloodstain appears on the floor, opening up a hole to the story below. Soon the house in filled with mourners, all encouraged to stay as long as they like by the husband, who ignores his wife’s ensuing breakdown. Aronofsky derives tension from strange sounds and occurrences—a dying bee, a hot frying pan, an exploding light bulb covered with blood—filmed with unbearable tedium. As the uninvited guests grow in number, wrecking the plumbing, flooding the house with water, and littering the rooms with garbage, you begin to suspect there’s more to this depravity than misguided hospitality. Lawrence goes nuts before the audience does, displaying a remarkable talent for screaming “Stop!” at the top of her lungs—something I wished I had thought of first. 
 
 MOTHER! 
 
 (0/4 stars) 
 
 Directed by: Darren Aronofsky 
 
 Written by: Darren Aronofsky 
 
 Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer 
 
 Running time: 121 mins. 
 
 Just when you think she’s had all she can take, there’s more. A baby is born amidst blood-curdling screams of childbirth as Lawrence crawls over piles of corpses in labor, and unruly mobs carrying torches arrive in a scene that looks based on the Charlottesville riots. In the ultimate destruction of the female gender, Lawrence tries to save the baby she has always dreamed of to make life complete, but Fellini grotesques in preposterous Halloween costumes fill the screen and burn the house down. The New York Times critic arrogantly warns in his review: “Don’t listen to anyone who natters on about how intense or disturbing it is.” Sorry, pal, but a mob that burns a screaming baby and its mother alive, then turns cannibal, eats the baby and rips its heart out to flush down the toilet while Patti Smith sings about the end of the world pretty much fits my definition of both “intense” and “disturbing.” What’s yours? 
 
 Nothing about mother! makes one lick of sense as Darren Aronofsky’s corny vision of madness turns more hilarious than scary. With so much crap around to clog the drain, I hesitate to label it the “Worst movie of the year” when “Worst movie of the century” fits it even better. ||||| correction: A previous version of this story incorrectly implied that cinematographer Matthew Libatique also shot the 2010 film “The Fighter.” That film was shot by cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema.This version has been updated. 
 
 Movie critic 
 
 'Mother!," Darren Aronofsky's tour de force of allegorical misdirection, is about many things, in succession and simultaneously. What begins as a creepily insinuating chamber piece of domestic discord quickly takes on more metaphorical meanings, with drama giving way to outright horror: Here, a parable of marital anxiety becomes a lurid, Boschlike meditation on environmental destruction, idolatry and — ultimately — blind devotion to a greedy and insatiable god. 
 
 Mostly, though, this intriguing but ultimately frustratingly undisciplined experiment is about Jennifer Lawrence, who proves once again what a supernatural screen presence she is, delivering a performance of transparency, stillness, physical grit and self-sacrificing courage. As the enigmatic title character, she's our surrogate and guide through the highly charged environment Aronofsky has conceived: In this case, it's an elegant Victorian house, standing regally in a serene field, that Lawrence's character is restoring as an idyllic home and creative cocoon for her husband, a famous poet played by Javier Bardem. 
 
 Fans of "The Shining" will think they have "Mother!" sussed when Bardem turns out to be blocked and when Lawrence's wary but radiant heroine begins to sense a beating heart underneath the house's sturdy bones. But then a strange couple — played in wickedly observant turns by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer — shows up, injecting a malign, anarchic force reminiscent of Sidney Blackmer and Ruth Gordon in "Rosemary's Baby." 
 
 And, yes, a Polanskian air of maternal dread — the primal fear of loss of control and privacy — suffuses "Mother!," which at its most astute and provocative could be a mirror to Aronofsky's own ambivalence about fame. Specifically, he seems to be zeroing in on auteur worship, parasitic fandom and women playing muse, vessel and protective space-maker for male genius. Lawrence, who exudes a stunning combination of innocence and watchful wisdom, pads through the characters' eight-sided house with the same alarm as Mia Farrow four decades ago, but also with more assurance and self-possession as the stakes of her fight become not just higher, but surreally so. 
 
 
 
 In a performance recalling Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby,” Jennifer Lawrence plays a wife who sets out to make the increasingly creepy Victorian home where she and her poet husband live a creative haven. (Niko Tavernise/Paramount Pictures/ Protozoa Pictures) 
 
 But even Lawrence's magnetic powers can't keep "Mother!" from going off the rails, which at first occurs cumulatively, then in a mad rush during the film's outlandish climax. Shot by Aronofsky's frequent cinematographer Matthew Libatique with the intimate close-ups familiar from "Black Swan" and "Requiem for a Dream," this is a movie whose sense of claustrophobia becomes woozily stifling, its dreamlike shots and pans, always from Lawrence's point of view, growing more nauseating by the minute. 
 
 As the visual language becomes increasingly nightmarish, the message of "Mother!" becomes exponentially more obscure. There's a Cain-and-Abel subplot suggesting that Aronofsky wasn't finished with the Old Testament after his 2014 movie "Noah," but then again, maybe this is his own viscerally graphic version of the Jesus story. Or, as he has intimated in comments to the media, perhaps this is the cri de coeur of an artist overwhelmed by environmental, social and cultural destruction. Whichever it is, "Mother!" seems assured to divide the filmmaker's fans, many of whom will celebrate another audacious statement from a master of cinema as dreamscape of our darkest unconscious, but some of whom will think he misses the mark in the interest of pulp excess and flamboyance. Wherever you land on that spectrum, it's difficult to argue that, while it lasts, "Mother!" flies its freak flag with intensity that is bracing, febrile and uncompromising. ||||| Women give, men take and the Old Testament crashes into modern anxiety in director Darren Aronofsky's "mother! " It is an audacious, bold and fascinating fever dream of a film. It's allegory for, well, everything (the environment, marriage, art, spirituality, you name it!), that will challenge, distress and edify anyone who chooses to submit themselves to this creation for two hours. 
 
 Like many Aronofsky endeavors, "mother!" is a film doesn't fit neatly into one genre. It starts out as one thing, a sort of psychological thriller and chamber drama about a couple living in a stately and remote home, and devolves gradually and then very suddenly into jaw-dropping chaos that almost seems to be testing the viewer. How much of Jennifer Lawrence's suffering can you take before covering your eyes? Or storming out of the theater? "Mother!" will get under your skin, that's a guarantee. 
 
 This film begs for a viewing unencumbered by lengthy summarization. It's not that it defies explanation, what happens is fairly straightforward as far as nightmare logic is concerned. But the less you know the better. 
 
 The setting is a grand Victorian home, plopped down in the middle of a field surrounded by trees. There lives a married couple (Lawrence and Javier Bardem), and it is peaceful and bright. It is an Eden dressed in Restoration Hardware linens that Lawrence's character (who is credited as "Mother" but never called that) has rebuilt for her husband (credited as Him) from wall to wall after a devastating fire burned it to the ground. She is earthy and quiet and perches her head to the wall to listen to the beating heart of the home in order to find the right shade of yellow for the space. 
 
 And then one night, a strange man (Ed Harris) comes to the door. Bardem's character, a famous poet suffering from extreme writer's block, invites him in, and the paradise Mother has so painstakingly created begins to crumble. The next day, the man's wife (a wickedly funny Michelle Pfeiffer) shows up too. Mother, while trying to be polite and a good hostess and still continue restoring her house, is also understandably bewildered by the sudden changes and her own husband's apparent disinterest in her objections to these strangers occupying their home. 
 
 For all the stress and anxiety that "mother!" will inspire in viewers, this section is really quite funny, human and relatable as Mother grapples with her absent husband and rude houseguests who drink their liquor and break their valuables and ask invasive questions about why she doesn't yet have children. 
 
 It is a host's worst nightmare, and it only gets worse for poor Mother — the only sane person around who of course is predestined to be driven crazy by everyone else. Aronofsky has a special appreciation for hyperbolic depictions of female madness and suffering, whether it's an aging woman looking to lose a few pounds in "Requiem for a Dream," a ballerina striving for perfection in "Black Swan," or a wife just looking to make an impeccable home for the person she loves in "mother!" 
 
 It is a tense and exciting film — one of Aronofsky's best — and Lawrence has never been better. Hers is a truly stunning and elevated performance full of beauty, empathy and rage at her own powerlessness and the greed and apathy spiraling out of control around her. 
 
 "Mother!" demands to be seen more than once, and afterward discussed and dissected. I'd also recommend taking a look at the credits to see the names of the other characters who come into their lives. 
 
 My heart has not stopped its anxious pounding, nor my head from spinning since seeing this film. 
 
 Mother, may I have a Xanax? 
 
 "mother!" a Paramount Pictures release, is rated R by the Motion Picture Association of America for "strong disturbing violent content, some sexuality, nudity and language." Running time: 121 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four. 
 
 ___ 
 
 MPAA Definition of R: Restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian. 
 
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 Follow AP Film Writer Lindsey Bahr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ldbahr ||||| Title Mother! Written by Darren Aronofsky Directed by Darren Aronofsky Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer Genre Horror Classification 18A Country USA Language English Year 2017 
 
 ★ for the Aronofsky agnostic 
 
 ★★★★ for the Aronofsky acolyte 
 
 In the beginning, so we're told, God created the heavens and the earth. In the beginning of Mother!, Darren Aronofsky creates a heaven on earth. 
 
 Paradise here is a massive octagonal wooden home in the middle of the countryside, inhabited by a nameless woman (Jennifer Lawrence), who has spent who knows how long sprucing it up, and her similarly anonymous poet husband (Javier Bardem), who's spent the same amount of time struggling with writer's block. The two are in love – or so each of them professes – and their days are filled with leisurely meals, lazy wanderings from room to room and furtive glances at the giant, mysterious crystal the husband keeps in his study. 
 
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 Until one day, when a stranger (Ed Harris) comes knocking at the door. He's looking for help, and the husband takes a shine to him. The woman – she's not quite sure of the man's intentions. Soon enough, the stranger's arrival is followed by that of his drunken, overtly sexual wife (Michelle Pfeiffer). And then their two warring sons (Brian Gleeson and Domhnall Gleeson) show up. And then – well, all hell breaks loose. In an extraordinarily literal sense. 
 
 And this is where Mother! either falls apart or opens up a chasm so wide that it threatens to swallow the theatre whole. Which is what happens when a filmmaker decides to play God – and make no mistake, Mother! is Aronofsky's very own creation myth, a profoundly upsetting and furious apology for what he considers humanity's original sin: existence. 
 
 If that sounds grandiose, it is nothing compared with the gonzo experiment Aronofsky has devised. Up to this point, the marketing campaign for Mother! has been light on details, heavy on atmosphere. Perhaps you've seen the trailers and assumed the film was a modern spin on Rosemary's Baby or The Shining – an eerie thriller centred on a young woman whose better half succumbs to some unspeakable evil. That log line is true in a sense. But there is so much more to Mother! – and also so much less. 
 
 Without wading too deep into spoiler waters, Mother! is a tale of what happens when a creative mind is given unfettered power and destroys almost everything in his (or His) wake. That indictment applies to both Bardem's character, who takes and takes from Lawrence's put-upon wife without giving her anything in return, and Aronofsky himself, who mines a history of genre tropes only to dismantle everything cinema stands for. In 121 minutes, the writer-director creates a vision that is equal parts horror, satire, polemic and sheer abomination. 
 
 For those devout members of the Church of Aronofsky – basically, anyone who has stuck with the auteur since catching Requiem for a Dream on cable when they were 14 and realizing that movies could be as scuzzy and dangerous as the mind's own limits – Mother! is a masterpiece. A frenzied plunge into Aronofsky's deepest fears and humanity's darkest temptations, it can be viewed as the latest escalation in the director's bombastic aesthetic, all chaos and carnage. 
 
 For those who remain skeptical of Aronofsky's previous efforts (even his most mainstream film, The Wrestler, is mired in darkness), Mother! will spark instant revulsion, even charges of heresy. Here he goes again, screeching into the megaphone like a grad student leading his first march on insert-corrupt-institution-here. Aronofsky is never one to whisper, but he shouts so often that he risks losing his voice entirely. 
 
 Yet even those who find themselves sitting between these two camps are guaranteed to walk away from Mother! feeling … something. Perhaps enlightenment. Or outrage. Or just a general sense of gobsmacked disbelief. By uniting the themes of his entire filmography – Pi's obsession with the secrets of the Almighty, Black Swan's focus on the damage done to female bodies for the sake of the male ego, Noah's belief that God is a cruel and jealous creator – and wrapping them in barbed-wire visuals engineered to churn the most cynical viewer's stomach, the director has reached peak Aronofsky. 
 
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 Mother! is an unparalleled achievement, entirely unprecedented and unexpected in this era of studio filmmaking. However Aronofsky convinced Paramount to fund this film and roll it out in wide release is an act of God itself, a true modern miracle. By the time, about three-quarters in, that Lawrence's character suffers an unimaginable betrayal – followed, not one minute later, by an even more horrifying twist of the knife – it is impossible to deny Aronofsky's sheer audacity, as well as the gall of those who funded such fearlessness. 
 
 The world is lucky to have Mother! I am lucky to have witnessed it. Lawrence and Bardem and Harris and Pfeiffer are lucky to have worked on such a once-in-a-lifetime project. But I am also happy that I will never have to watch it again. ||||| The dark lord materialized moments later. It’s not an ill-fitting nickname, at least cinematically. On screen Mr. Aronofsky has conjured up all manner of ghoulish misbehavior and grotesqueries in “Requiem for a Dream” and “Black Swan.” “Mother!,” an ambitious parable hidden in a horror flick, tops them easily. What starts as a home-invasion psychological thriller ends in flaming nightmare surrealism, stuffed with themes that divided, and mystified, critics. 
 
 “‘Mother!’ will likely be 2017’s most hated movie,” declared the Verge, while others called it “brilliant” and “an unparalleled achievement.” “It’s a hoot!” A.O. Scott wrote in The New York Times. 
 
 With a reported $30 million budget and an artistic sensibility usually reserved for the indie crowd, it’s a wild gamble as a major release for its studio, Paramount, especially on the heels of “It,” Warner Bros.’s more traditional, and decipherable, horror blockbuster. Even with the benefit of two Oscar winners in a usually surefire genre, and the frisson of a romance between the director and the leading lady, “Mother!” underperformed its modest box office estimates after opening Sept. 15. But if it alienates mass audiences, it could also be the slow-burn conversation piece of the year, with high-profile defenders including Anthony Bourdain, the “Star Wars” director Rian Johnson and Chris Rock. 
 
 On the surface, it’s about a couple, Ms. Lawrence and Javier Bardem, in a rambling, secluded Victorian house. He’s a poet, with one major hit but troubled by writer’s block; she is renovating their home, forever tidying up. Their placid life is dismantled by hordes of uninvited guests who won’t leave. All the symbolism — packed like a Russian nesting doll, with religious iconography, celebrity culture and military-industrial-state overtones — is in service of one grander idea, the allegory that moved Mr. Aronofsky to write the script in an uncharacteristically prolific five-day stretch. “I just pounded through it, kind of like a fever dream,” he said. 
 
 But the allegory seems to have eluded many viewers, and Mr. Aronofsky and Ms. Lawrence disagreed about how much to reveal. “He wants people to go in blind,” she said, which she felt was a shame. “You’re going to miss all of the detail and all of the brilliance behind the whole movie,” she said. “My advice is to understand the allegory.” 
 
 Mr. Aronofsky favored an unsuspecting audience, the better to enable interpretations, or astonish. But, he said, looking at his girlfriend across the conference table, “She can do whatever she wants. She’s a genius marketer and clearly doesn’t need any career advice from anyone, and knows how to sell a movie.” 
 
 Ms. Lawrence: “Are you being sarcastic?” 
 
 He wasn’t, and so, let’s follow her lead. Thematic spoilers ahead, but rest assured that even if you absorb them, the movie will throw curveballs. “Mother!” is about Mother Earth (Ms. Lawrence) and God (Mr. Bardem), whose poetic hit has the weight of the Old Testament: hence all the visitors clamoring for a piece of Him, as his character is called. The house represents our planet. (Walking the wooden floorboards in bare feet is what finally got the part to click, Ms. Lawrence said.) The movie is about climate change, and humanity’s role in environmental destruction. 
 
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 The action takes place on the biblical sixth day (the film’s original title was “Day Six,” she said) and follows that timeline. “You have the creation of people, you have the creation of religion itself, people reading the same writing and arguing over its meaning, false idols,” Ms. Lawrence said. She got the religious references immediately. “I was a Bible nerd — Bible study every Sunday,” she said, adding an expletive. 
 
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 Mr. Aronofsky, an environmentalist who’s active with the Sierra Club, pitched her the concept, which she liked, yet she was still taken aback by the full vision in the script, which wreaks unyielding, gruesome havoc on her character. “When I first read it,” she said, “I didn’t even want it in my house. I thought it was evil, almost.” 
 
 It drew her because she’d never encountered anything like it. “What I’ve always loved about Darren is, he’s unapologetic and he’s bold,” she said, adding: “I agreed with the film’s message wholeheartedly. It’s an assault, and it needs to be.” 
 
 Alternative interpretations abound, though, including Mr. Bardem’s. He acknowledged the environmental symbolism, but said that for him, the idea that resonated the most was what he called “the birth of a religion as a cult,” which divides more than it unites. Playing God was a stretch, he said. “I couldn’t relate, humanly speaking,” he said. “But every time I went back to that allegory, I found my wisdom.” 
 
 Other views lean on the relationship between the older, brilliant but narcissistic artist and his adoring, if unfulfilled, gorgeous young partner. Mr. Bardem is 48, the same as Mr. Aronofsky; Ms. Lawrence is 27. Mr. Aronofsky bristled at the suggestion that the screen dynamic might be perceived as mirroring that of auteur and megastar in real life. “How could it? Our relationship didn’t start until after the film happened,” he said. “You know, we just had a great time together, and that’s it.” 
 
 Ms. Lawrence laughed. “Can’t you tell from the movie?” 
 
 As a couple, they can seem mismatched, Mr. Aronofsky the buttoned-up cineaste to her expressive exuberance. It seems about right that he wanted to be tight-lipped about the movie and she didn’t: little is off-limits with Ms. Lawrence. Sitting in the anodyne conference room before he arrived, talk turned to motherhood. “My grandma went through early menopause, my mom went through early menopause,” she said. “I handle stress like a — like a hummingbird, maybe? I’ll be like, 35, by the time I start drying up. And that’s on the record. I want that to be a pull quote. I’m no Mother Earth! Drying up as we speak!” 
 
 Later, out of her earshot, Mr. Aronofsky said: “It’s always fun to be in a room with Jen. She’s hilarious and real and truthful.”
– Darren Aronofsky's psychological drama Mother! Is a descent into chaos, told through the eyes of a woman whose home, which she shares with her poet husband, is invaded by various guests. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer, the film has an audience score of 53% on Rotten Tomatoes, though critics are more favorable at 74%. Here's what critics are saying: Like Aronofsky's other films (Black Swan, Requiem for a Dream), Mother! is "assaultive" and clearly "not for everyone." But "viewers willing to accept the challenge will be rewarded with passages embodying extraordinary moods and images" in "another of Aronofsky's ominous extravaganzas," writes Walter Addiego at the San Francisco Chronicle. He applauds the entire "top-notch cast," but especially Lawrence. The actress "proves once again what a supernatural screen presence she is, delivering a performance of transparency, stillness, physical grit and self-sacrificing courage," writes Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post. Mother! on the other hand is an "intriguing but ultimately frustratingly undisciplined experiment … whose sense of claustrophobia becomes woozily stifling," writes Hornaday. An "outlandish climax" is off-putting, to boot. But Lindsey Bahr calls the movie "one of Aronofsky's best." It's "an audacious, bold and fascinating fever dream of a film" and an "allegory for, well, everything," she writes at the AP. It "will get under your skin, that's a guarantee," but the film also has moments that are "funny, human and relatable," writes Bahr, crediting Lawrence's "truly stunning" performance. According to Bahr, she's "never been better." According to Barry Hertz, Mother! is a "once-in-a-lifetime film" that, at the very least, will make viewers feel something. But for fans of Aronofsky, "Mother! is a masterpiece … a frenzied plunge into Aronofsky's deepest fears and humanity's darkest temptations," he writes at the Globe and Mail. "The world is lucky to have Mother! I am lucky to have witnessed it," he adds. "But I am also happy that I will never have to watch it again."