After the release of a mysterious teaser last month, the official trailer for Darren Aronofsky's mother! (that's how it's styled: lowercase, with an exclamation point!), starring Jennifer Lawrence, just dropped, and holy hell, is it creepy.
Now, we did expect a certain level of mindf*ck from the guy who directed Black Swan, but still, this is . . . terrifying. In her artiest role yet, J.Law plays the beautiful young wife of Javier Bardem, who may or may not be hiding something (or a lot of things), when an older married couple (played by Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer) unexpectedly come to stay at their newly renovated home. And also, the walls are bleeding? And the lights are exploding? And what's with the yellow powder that Lawrence drops into her water? And the music is all screechy violins, which is never a good sign. We have chills.
The trailer also tells us that "seeing is believing," but we're betting that it's not quite so simple in this case. If Lawrence's character is as paranoid (perhaps rightfully so?) as the trailer indicates, she probably doesn't know what to believe about these strangers who—wait a minute—have a picture of Javier Bardem in their luggage and are having sex and now the house is rotting and everything is on fire? And there are more pictures of Javier Bardem, and those pictures are on fire, and, like, what's with this haunted basement and WHAT IS WITH THIS BLOODY LIGHTBULB?
"You're insane!" sobs Lawrence at one point, and, uh, we're given to agree. Whatever's going on here is bordering on crazy.
We know from IMDb that the film also stars the Gleesons (Brendan and Domhnall) and Kristen Wiig, though we don't get a look at their characters in this trailer. Does that mean they don't have much screen time, or do they show up in a moment so twisty and unexpected that the studio can't spoil it? Check out the equally unnerving new poster for the film below, which has Lawrence styled like the creepiest object of all: a doll.
We'll just have to see it (to believe it) when mother! hits theaters on September 15.
