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Mother!

4/10

Stars: Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, Michelle Pfeiffer, Domhnall Gleeson, Brian Gleeson

Director: Darren Aronofsky

A high-budget horror film that gets dafter by the minute. What were Lawrence and Bardem thinking?

I guess they wanted to work with this director. Alas, Aronofsky plunges head first into a sea of chiller clichés and doesn't seem to have an original idea in his head. And God it's long...

Poet Bardem tells pregnant wife Lawrence that ' All I'm trying to do is bring love to this house' but he has a funny way of showing it. Enter weirdos Harris, who seems to be dying, and wife Pfeiffer, who disrupt what's left of the house's peace and quiet, especially when one of her sons kills the other.

Lawrence kicks them all out, but they're soon back. 'They have nowhere to go,' says Bardem (bit like the film), 'so I told them it would be all right to invite over friends and family': cue lots of candles, and weird rites that come across as meaningless.

A movie like this needs to be heading towards some destination, but Aronofsky's head-hurter has no place to go. Prizes will be awarded to anyone able to make sense of it.

David Quinlan

USA/Canada 2017. UK Distributor: Paramount. Colour (unspecified).
121 minutes. Widescreen. UK certificate: 15.

Guidance ratings (out of 3): Sex/nudity 1, Violence/Horror 2, Drugs 0, Swearing 2.

Review date: 11 Sep 2017