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Mother!

Apostle
Posted on October 14, 2018

3 Films That Explain Apostle

Dawn Keetley

Obviously my title here is reductive. No three films can explain any other, especially when that other film is Apostle, the enormously rich new folk horror film by Gareth Evans. But this is a series we’re running (3 films that explain another)—and these three films do explain some things about Apostle, if not everything.

They are The Wicker Man (Robin Hardy, 1973) –not surprising because so far virtually everyone has compared the film to Hardy’s classic folk horror film—The Village (M. Night Shyamalan, 2004 ), and mother! (Darren Aronofsky, 2017), a film I express my loathing for here, but which is nonetheless an important film.

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Posted on September 17, 2017

Aronofsky’s mother! Unabashed Misogyny

Dawn Keetley

This post contains spoilers; I thought about it long and hard but was unable to write about mother! without discussing the ending.

Darren Aronofsky’s most recent film was preceded by a suitably vague trailer that quite effectively, as it turned out, disguises what his film is actually about.

And much of the film, like the trailer, is intriguing because it doesn’t give away what’s going on, what kind of film mother! is. It trades in many horror film conventions, raising all kinds of expectations: there’s a couple isolated in a house, each with a mysterious past; there’s a house that seems itself to be sentient, alive; there are uninvited guests who quickly turn hostile (is this a home invasion film?); and there’s an uncanny pregnancy (Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby is one of the principal cinematic touchstones of Mother!). Jennifer Lawrence does a great job of playing the standard “haunted house” protagonist, especially after she becomes pregnant, a woman who may or may not be seeing what’s actually there, may or may not be experiencing hallucinations. Indeed, for much of its run-time, mother! seems like a gothic horror film, a subgenre that is notable for featuring strong women and feminist themes.

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