10 Confusing Horror Movies You Need To Watch Twice To Understand
1. Mother! (2017)
As alluded to earlier, Darren Aronofsky is no stranger to creating incredibly troubling, elaborate, and divisive works (such as 1998’s Pi, 2006’s The Fountain, and 2010’s Black Swan). That’s said, his newest feature – 2017’s mother! – is perhaps his most provocatively opaque and gruesome outing yet.
There’s so much going on here that it’s difficult to summarize the plot. Suffice to say, though, that its main characters and conflicts – a woman watches powerlessly as her utopic life is disrupted by dozens of strangers who venerate her husband beyond measure – are equal parts ghastly, cruel, pensive, and figurative.
It's truly terrifying to see Jennifer Lawrence’s titular protagonist get treated with such effortlessly meanspirited and violent disrespect (including instances of self-immolation, infanticide, and mass murder) by literally everyone around her. By the end, audiences wholly adopt her sense of confusion and lack of agency, unsure of why things happened as they did and what it all means.
As a result, most viewers will need a second look to put even its most overt Biblical allusions – like an uninvited couple being kicked out for stealing something while one of their sons kills the other one out of jealously and spite – into the proper context.