Mother! (18)

Like Black Swan before it, Darren Aronofksy’s nightmarish rollercoaster ride through a young woman’s rapidly unravelling psyche is not a conventional horror movie. Cast against-type, Jennifer Lawrence stars as the devoted wife of an egocentric poet (Javier Bardem) who finds the elaborate home she’s renovating invaded by a succession of guests that disrupt, destabilise and generally ruin her life. That, however, barely scratches the surface of a film in which house walls turn spongy, floorboards become fleshy and a discarded heart plays havoc with the plumbing. Deploying a sort of hallucinatory, horror movie dream logic, the film only gets stranger and more out-there as Lawrence’s nevernamed character falls pregnant and her impotent rage at the chaos her husband keeps inviting into their life intensifies. An allegory for our crazy times, it’s not for the faint of heart – or, evidently, those who like their entertainment spoon-fed to them. Ed Harris and Michelle Pfieffer co-star. ■