Mother! (2017) reviews

The Fuzzy Mushroom take on Mother!

By Fuzzy Mushroom · Updated 11 November 2026 · The Pros 78 · The Punters 65 · Spore Score 75 · How we write our takes

Why The Pros and The Punters disagree

Mother! is Darren Aronofsky's most divisive film, and a rare case where critics liked it more than audiences. The Pros give it 78, The Punters 65, for a Spore Score of 75. The 13-point gap is the difference between those who read it as an allegory and those who went in expecting a horror film. In the US it was one of very few wide releases ever to receive an F CinemaScore from opening-night audiences.

What it does well

A poet (Javier Bardem) and his much younger wife (Jennifer Lawrence) live in a remote country house that she is restoring by hand. A stranger (Ed Harris) turns up, then his wife (Michelle Pfeiffer), then their sons. The poet welcomes them all. His wife, never named, watches her home being taken over, and things escalate far beyond any normal home-invasion story.

The camera stays close to Lawrence for almost the whole film, so we feel every intrusion as she does. The sound design is unnerving, and Pfeiffer is wickedly good as the guest who asks all the wrong questions. Once you see the film's biblical and environmental allegory, with the house standing in for the Earth, the escalation makes a mad kind of sense, and the final half-hour is one of the most extreme sequences in a modern studio film.

Where people push back

The symbolism is heavy, and some viewers find the treatment of the central woman, who suffers relentlessly, punishing rather than meaningful. The final act includes extreme violence that many found unwatchable. It was marketed as a thriller, which set up the wrong expectations.

Who it is for

Viewers who enjoy arthouse provocations and like to argue about meaning afterwards. Not for anyone wanting a relaxing night in.

The Fuzzy Mushroom verdict

Worth a watch, Spore Score 75. An audacious, maddening film. We side with The Pros: whatever you make of it, you will not forget it.