Mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017)

Aronofsky moves on to psychological horror and the result is somewhat of a mess. Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem star as a couple living in seclusion, Him (this is literally the name the character is given, with pretentions of universality) a poet with writer's block and Mother (likewise, that's her moniker) a younger woman who just wants a child to fill the void. Then creepy fans of his start turning up and imposing themselves to an intolerable degree on the couple, which Him is blithely unconcerned about while her mind starts to unravel, in the manner of Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion or, as still another obvious Polanski influence, Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby. The air of simmering menace and mystery sustain it for a while, but then it goes into the territory of The Purge in an orgiastically brutal manner and Lawrence is just left to weep and scream more and more. Aronofsky has proved with certain films, such as The Wrestler, that he can occasionally keep his auteurish excesses in check, but the lack of discipline here is more akin to that evidenced in his windbag sci-fi The Fountain.

5/10