The Darren Aronofsky film looks even scarier than we thought it was.
VANITY FAIR – If you thought that first horrifying teaser for Mother! was insane, feast your eyes upon the new full trailer. Plot details for Darren Aronofsky’s mysterious film, starring Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer, have finally come to light by way of the full clip, a snapshot of all the terror to come.
The trailer begins calmly enough, with Lawrence’s character redecorating the home she shares with her partner (Bardem, in a typically matched Hollywood pairing). “I want to make it paradise,” she coos. Then one day, a stranger (Harris) shows up in need of some lodging. And then his sinister wife (Pfeiffer) shows up. And everything starts to blow up in slow motion.
In typical Aronofsky fashion, Mother! seems to be all about terrifying mind tricks coupled with real-world horror (though it’s a step up in the pure-horror department from Black Swan). After the arrival of her strange guests, Lawrence quickly starts to unravel, racked with paranoia, snooping around until she finds something truly unsettling—a picture of her husband in the strange man’s bag. Pfeiffer and Harris’s characters are up to no good, planting doubt in the home owners’ relationship, and bringing with them a world of creepy mind tricks and a parade of ghoulish people with death in their eyes.
The real terror, however, is that the beautiful house gets destroyed, piece by piece. Lawrence’s character did all that redecorating for naught! Lightbulbs bleed and explode, one room catches on fire, and there’s a wall in the creepy cellar (there’s always a creepy cellar) that rattles, booms, and spurts blood. It’s like reverse HGTV.
Mother! hits theaters on Sept. 15, a prime release date for awards-season audiences to sit down and see if Aronofsky has a potential best-picture nominee on his hands. Oscar crowds don’t typically go for horror, but the filmmaker’s particular brand of fear coupled with his winning cast might be too hard to ignore—depending on the final product, of course.
