Then again, it’s arguable that director Darren Aronofsky’s been making off-beat horror movies off and on since his career started with the whine of a drill in 1998. His debut, Pi, was the most oppressive film ever made about maths. Requiem For A Dream‘s addiction drama had more than its share of nightmare moments. Ballet saga Black Swan came laced with the exploitation edge of 70s Italian cinema. With Mother!, Aronofsky follows his weird Bible fantasy, Noah, with his purest expression of horror yet. This is a curious blend of Roman Polanski, Franz Kafka and the kind of dreams brought about by a vicious bout of food poisoning. (If you’re wondering about the absence of names in all this, it’s because there aren’t any: not unlike Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist, they’re simply credited as Mother and Him.) The couple’s equilibrium is soon disturbed by some visitors: first a doctor (Ed Harris) who smokes enthusiastically, and his sour wife (Michelle Pfeiffer) who becomes more spitefully intrusive as she reaches the bottom of her booze-laced lemonade. Old wounds are opened up between the two homeowners, and gradually, their lives take on a hallucinatory turn as their visitors’ aggressive sons (real-life siblings Domhnall and Brian Gleeson) come crashing through the front door. The precise meaning of Aronofsky’s symbolism – if there is one single meaning – will likely spark months, if not years of pub debate. Is this all meant to be a semi-autobiographical comment on what fame does to relationships, since Aronofsky and Lawrence are an item in real life? Is it intended as a biblical allegory set within the confines of one house? Could the way Lawrence’s increasingly rude guests treat her home be an allegory for our destruction of the planet? Or is it maybe a comment on the way the film industry treats women? It’s quite possible that all these readings are correct. What’s clear is how much Aronofsky – who writes as well as directs – enjoys toying with the staples of the horror genre, particularly gothic horror: there are locked rooms, a swooning heroine, hidden passages, and a very ominous basement. For this writer, however, it’s somewhat disappointing how heavily Aronofsky leans on the hackneyed elements of genre cinema: jump-scares, peek-a-boo moments where figures appear in the negative spaces behind lead characters. All the same, Aronofsky commits himself to Mother! with a certain gonzo, go-for-broke fervour that’s impossible to ignore. His movie harkens back to the 70s era, when Hollywood studios would commit A-picture budgets to horror pieces like The Exorcist, The Shining and the aforementioned Rosemary’s Baby. While Mother! can’t match the brilliance of those movies, it remains a thought-provoking and eccentric descent into the unknown. Mother! is out in UK cinemas on the 15th September.