21 Days of Spooky: mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017)

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21 Days of Spooky is not about pop culture that sets out to fright you with brain-eating, viscerae-hanging, slash-killing scenes, but with thoughts that linger and persist on your life long after you've watched them. Or are just downright creepy. Tonight's spooky: Darren Aronofsky's mother!. Some spoilers ahead.

What's it about?: It's biblical allegories on crack, as a woman (who represents Mother Earth) crashes in with a troubled author (aka. God), who kinda treats her poorly, and then a bunch of weird people (read: your average human) come and fuck her and her house up physically.

Forget about A Cure for Wellness and its watery eels down people's throats, here's the loudest contender for the WTFery award in the Days of Spooky feature. And it's not necessarily WTF-y visually wise, at least not as much as a random dead cow full of eels, but the whole film's spirit is to be as confusing and terrible as possible. After all, it's Aronofsky's way of pointing a finger at you and say "you're a bad bad human, you're causing Earth a boo boo", with the added benefit of giving you several therapy sessions consisting on processing all the weird shit you saw in those two hours.

I have to admit it takes a lot of balls to fuck with your spectator like this, because every damn shot is either a reference, an allegory, or simply something creepy enough to linger in you forever. It literally sets you at the end of the previous cycle of abuse, so you don't have to expect much else for mother (Jennifer Lawrence) than have her burn to shit alongside everything else. Or maybe you do expect a different ending, because you're an innocent soul that expects Mother "I'm withering due to global warming" Earth not being tortured in a story about how cyclically fucked up humanity has been since forever.

No matter what I say here, I won't truly be able to spoil you anything about this film thanks to the sheer randomness of the whole endeavor. mother! gives you the ending at the beginning and immediately sets you on a rollercoaster of fuckery the likes of which have rarely been seen, and you know who's to blame? Humans. It's only when the mere mortals start showing up (including the WTFery representations of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel) that the house and mother are in danger. Heck, halfway through the film you realize house and mother are the same entity: when the house is broken she suffers, and viceversa.

We never see what Him (Javier Bardem, playing the only character with a capitalised letter in its name, because allegory) puts out to the world, and yet he has this crazed horde of fanboys/fangirls ready to fuck shit up for reasons, invoke actual police to come to the house's defend and, of course, have the finest cannibalistic instincts this side of Hannibal Lecter. Fantastic people, the best people. mother! is essentially an introvert's nightmare. The monsters are inside the house, and are strangers who only want debauchery and perhaps getting to know you real hard.

I'd even argue that the most haunting images on this film are not related to our titular mother, but to the damage inside the house, the straight-up anxiety you get when mother insists the sink is not yet braced and there go the fuckers and start sitting and jumping on the sink. There's a beating heart inside the walls? Eh, no one care. Randos barging into your house and using your toilet unannounced, plus stealing your stuff? Fire up the DEFCON 5000, please. Of course you have the wildest imagery, like Kristen Wiig shooting at people point-blank for some reason, but that's just filler for the more concerning threats.

The real danger is shady strangers coming over to stay at your place and your significant other dismissing your concerns. The real danger is a guy murdering his sibling at your place and you encountering said murderer alone in the dark. The real danger is trying to protect your child from a horde of maniacs. The real danger is your significant other handing over your child to danger when you're weakened for highly shallow reasons. Is there a need for gruesome or strange imagery when the really scary concepts are there, and are so simple to portray? No, but the director wanted you to have some nightmare fuel.

And you know what? He was right, we are horrible people who shit all over creation. I mean, look at me right now, dissecting his film for the shits and giggles. I barged into his crack-allegory feature house and started jumping on the unbraced sink. I should stop.

Tomorrow: Come to Andy Muschietti's short Mamá's arms.