"God help you."
— Woman
Darren Aronofsky is no stranger to horrifingly Mind Screw-y films, and this film likely ramps all the disturbing features of that genre up to eleven.
Be wary: per wiki policy, spoilers are off on Nightmare Fuel pages!
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Pre-Movie
- All of the fucking posters. Basically, Mind Screw and nightmarish imagery combined.
- Mother
◊ holds her own bloody heart which seems to be cut out from her chest. And there is no sign of pain on her face, just happiness. - Him◊ is holding an orb with an image of a baby while sitting in the flames of screaming faces.
- The movie's official Instagram account put up a part of that poster with some audio combining loud, incomprehensible background noise with his character screaming, "All I'm trying to do is bring life into this house!" The dialogue and background noise loop three times. If you run this audio through an audio tool, the audio spectrogram it produces◊ has Bardem's face hidden in it.
- The movie's official Instagram account put up a part of that poster
- Mother's worried face.◊ Not only is it scary because her face covers the entire poster, but look closely. There are tiny cracks and chips around her face, indicating that it's a porcelain doll replica of her.
- Mother
- trailer:
- The creepy and vague shots such as a bloody light bulb exploding, a man walking into a fire, and Mother screaming in horror.
- The screeching noises, which sound like a saw is being used on a violin.
Movie
- The first part of the film — before Man and Woman even arrive — is idealistic and hopeful, but you just know that something's amiss. It goes downhill from here.
- Him's completely nonplussed, almost joyful reactions to everything that's going on is ridiculously unsettling."They've come to see me."
- The fact that he's such an accommodating host to the point of forgiving the house guests for killing his son, and begs Mother to do the same.
- The imagery of the bloodstain that won't come out of the floorboards is mildly creepy. The way it slowly grows whenever mother isn't looking is worse. The Reveal that beneath the surface stain there's been a steady dribbling river-like flow of corrosive blood eating away the house's foundation is terrifying (and the closest this film comes to a classic Jump Scare).
- Mother's actual birth is just as disturbing as the other examples, with the house shaking every time she pushes. The ensuing riots and violence do not help.
- The film's heavy emphasis on guests coming into mother's space, openly bullying and disrespecting her, and contemptuously laughing it off when she tries to lay claim to her home and her property is serious Nightmare Fuel for people with social anxiety and/or a history of abuse. Especially when her husband placidly refuses to acknowledge they're doing anything wrong, to the point of outright Gaslighting.
- Mother's baby gets its neck snapped, and is then cannibalized by the house guests. ONSCREEN. There's a nauseating shot of its disemboweled body.
- There's also the fear of having a bunch of irresponsible strangers drag away your child. The baby's innocent, fearful cries don't help.
- Jennifer Lawrence herself felt the scene went too far, which says a lot. Hell, it even caused some people to walk out of the theatre, with some even demanding refunds!
- The crowd beating and stripping Mother, given the vicious names she's called and the implication that she was going to be raped.
- Mother's Roaring Rampage of Revenge can be seen as this and an example how terrifying Jennifer Lawrence can be when given a role. She stabs several guests with a glass shard, and lets out a Skyward Scream that literally makes the ground shatter."GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!"
- When she blows up the house with Man's lighter and the basement oil tank, she spares nobody—not even the mother and her child seen earlier.
- Add to the fact that throughout the movie, Mother constantly feels the House's heart (which is also implied to be hers, too). In the beginning, it's beating red, but after the Trauma Conga Line she suffers, it turns black.
- The camera's refusal to cut away as Him tears mother's heart out of her charred, dying body is pretty hard to take.
- The implicit nature of the universe itself, once you realize that all of this has been a sort of translation-convention for how God and Mother Nature see humanity and each other. A God who is an utter narcissist willing to create a horrific universe where everyone is destined to suffer horribly and die, just so he will be adored for creating. A world where no one will ever be happy, not even God, because his hunger for adoration is completely insatiable. And since he is invincible, he will do it again and again for eternity. In short, a Hell-Universe.
