mother! is wow! or wtf! Full spoilers.

Mother Movie Spoilers

Read my non-spoiler mother! movie review here, but first stay put and buckle up, because here comes as much as I can remember for your mother movie spoiler enjoyment.

In the beginning

First of all, we got the movie time wrong, so we missed the first few minutes where mother! opens on a burning woman, then on a house in a field with no roads leading to it.

When we got there Javier Bardem and Jennifer Lawrence were just hanging out in the house, chilling.

Javier Bardem is Him, the older Husband who is a famous Poet. Jennifer Lawrence is Her, his younger Wife. They don’t actually have kids yet, but no names are ever used in the movie.

The husband hangs out in his study on an upper floor of the house. He’s had big success in his previous works, but seems to be in a slump now. The Wife is a loving and encouraging supporter of his writing.

He tries to write while she works making their house a paradise. Their home is a combination of Pottery Barn and the Magnolia Market collection at Target. She’s like Joanna Gaines in an ash-blond lacefront wig and baggy tops from Anthropologie. Apparently, she’s built the house up from nothing after a fire. Some rooms are done, and some rooms are still in process.

One night there’s a knock on the front door. It’s Ed Harris in an Irish driving cap. He is The Man, an orthopedic surgeon at the nearby hospital. He invites himself in under some flimsy pretext. The Husband is thrilled to have him there to chat, but the Wife offers him tea in that way any women knows you need to not sit down on the good couch. He lights up a cigarette and has to be told not to smoke in the house. He puts his lighter on the hall table.

By the time she comes back with her please-don’t-get-comfortable tea, the guys are sipping from a flask and getting to know each other. She seems prissy when she turns down the booze.

Actually The Man had been told this house is a bed and breakfast, he says trying to look tired. Sounds great, says the Husband. The Wife reluctantly goes into the scary dark basement to retrieve some freshly pressed Boll and Branch sheets from an old trunk, as you do.

As she walks by the hall table, she cat-paw swipes The Man’s lighter off the table where it lodges against the furniture and the wall. Checkov’s lighter.

Houseguests Stink After the Sixth Day

Time passes, the Man is still hanging around and the Husband is loving it. Yay, company! Then knock-knock, a women, The Woman has arrived in the form of sexy cougar Michelle Pfeiffer. She barges in, and manages in a few sentences to dirty-talk with her husband, hit on the Husband, and dissect everything about the Wife.

Oh, you don’t want kids? No, you do but aren’t sure. Well, you won’t stay young forever, honey.

The Man and the Woman stay, and stay. They make a mess in the kitchen with their spiked lemonade. They interupt the Husband’s writing and the Wife’s spackling the parlor. They leave bloody tissues in the bathroom. When the Wife tries flushing away the Man’s gross tissues, a frigging human heart comes up the pipes and squirts out a little blood when she tries to plunge it.

The house creaks and is sometimes the only sound you hear. Sometimes it sounds like a heartbeat.

The houseguests still stay, revealing they always knew the Husband was a famous poet, The Poet. In His study, they want to keep one of His many copies of His Book, His Words. They want to touch the knickknacks in the study, especially the cool glass lump that has pride of place on the shelves. It’s clear glass with lines of fiery gold in the heart of it. They are not allowed to touch it.

The Man is dying of his lung problems. He wants to hang out a while longer with the Poet. They drink too much, go on about their kids, and hump in the guest bedroom. They monopolize The Poet so he gets no writing done, not that he was creating much of anything new.

Suddendly, the Man and Woman’s grown sons arrive fighting over the Man’s will. The sons are real-life brothers Brian (pronounced breen) and Domnhall (pronounced doh-nall) Gleeson. They are a good fit to play the sons of Ed Harris and Michelle (pronounced mee-chu-lay-lay) Pheiffer.

The sons tumble around like two Looney Tunes characters fighting. The younger son is the parents favorite and the older son is pissed his inheritance will be put in a trust, even though his dad is not even dead yet. They tumble into the guest bedroom and the younger son’s head is pounded so hard he bleeds from all over the nice hardwood floor of reclaimed barn wood.

The Husband throws the older son off his brother so hard that the younger man hits his forehead. It leaves a bloody mark. He runs out of the house.

Everyone else leaves to take the younger son to the hospital. The young Wife is left to lock up and clean up all the blood.

Now it gets weird.

She cleans up, but not all the blood goes from the floor. She covers the stain with a lovely sissal rug from the Martha Stewart Allegory collection available at Macy’s.

The door in the kitchen in unlocked and open. The outcast murdering son pops in, says “You understand, right?” then looks at the audience and winks (not really), running out the front door.

Husband returns. The son has died. Get ready for the wake, says He. The two bereaved assholes show up with a bunch of friends who really make themselves at home. They ask the Husband the Poet to say a few words and he says something faux-deep about the voice yelling in the darkness is their son’s love so blah-blah-blah everybody cry.

The Woman tells the wife she should at least cover up her boobs with some becoming mourning wear. Then we see a pov on Jennifer Lawrence’s cleavage. She changes because there was a sale at lululemon, Ashley.

People keep sitting on the kitchen sink counter and the Wife warns them it’s not braced yet. Checkov’s sink, available at Lowe’s.

The Man and Woman go up to the study. They touch the forbidden glass object d’art. The Poet finally gets mad, kicks them out and boards up His study, because that is a rational reaction.

Second Wind

The house is empty again. They fight, they have makeup sex, she wakes up the next morning and says she’s pregnant. Uh, okay Miss First Response.

The Husband is so inspired by what he said about the dead son he writes a new book. Best thing ever, says Wife. She putters around house looking silvery and lovely in the Gwyneth Paltrow maternity collection available at goop dot com.

She sets up a baby crib and tiny clothes and wash cloths in the former guest room. There is an out-out-damn-blood-spot under the rug. Nothing to worry about.

Then the landline in the kitchen rings (actually the second weirdest thing to happen in this movie) and it’s the Poet’s agent. She loves the new Words and can’t wait to do the book tour. The Wife is crestfallen because this means The Poet showed someone else his new work first. She’s always been his biggest support, so this is a betrayal that stings.

It’s night. To celebrate, Wife puts on a smokey eye makeup, styles her wig in an Oscar-appropriate chignon, and wears a goddess gown made out of a heavy-handed symbolism and silk blend. She’s prepared a feast for a multitude for two. Dinner’s ready, dear!

People at the door. The Poet loves the attention. Jut one minute, darling.

Agent arrives. (It’s Kristen Wiig!) Let’s set up the Book signing in the dining room. This won’t take long, dear.

Now things really get weird.

In the kitchen, the people touch things, eat things, break things. Men openly hit on the Wife-Mother, then call her names when she rebuffs them. In every room there is chaos, an invasion of thoughtless and destructive uninvited guests. A couple sits, sits, sits on the unbraced sink.

The sink falls, the pipes burst, She screams, the house pulses. Guests are painting the rooms. Tableaux of religious symbolism happen as the wife runs from room to room.

Parades, holy days, holy wars, ceremonies, wars, feasts, genocide, women held in cages by Eastern-European pimps from the movie Taken. Civilizations rise and fall in the parlor. Purges occur in the dining room. Kristen Wiig has the best deadpan line in a movie ever.

Now things really get weird.

The Husband and Wife escape to the study, a sanctum. Wife gives birth. It’s a boy. (Keep up now.)

Husband-Father wants to show the Son to their awesome house guests, because that’s a good idea. Wife-Mother says are you actually kidding me right now? Husband drags over a big overstuffed chair from the John the Baptist collection at Ethan Allen and they stare at each other for days.

mother! nurses the baby and wraps him in swaddling clothes courtesy of Jessica Alba’s Nativity Collection.

When she falls asleep, (on the third day?) father! snatches up the baby! and runs downstairs to present his son to the people! Things have only gone more downhill downstairs. Yes, more.

The baby is grabbed (by now it’s a CGI baby; keep reminding yourself it’s a CGI baby. When you wake at night, tell the thing at the foot of your bed, “you’re just a CGI baby.”)and stress-pees everywhere as it is passed overhead. (Same, CGI baby. This will get you banned at Bonaroo.)

Then, dear readers, they eat that freaking CGI baby. They. Eat. The. Baby. While I’m sure it becomes for them the bread of allegory, it sends mother! over the edge.

She screams, the house pulses. She is knocked to the ground by the crowd, her top is unsexily ripped off, and she is close-up beaten in the face over and over while the crowd screams obscenities at her.

She rises, grabs the lighter she hid earlier and races downstairs to the basement. There’s been stuff with the floorboards bleeding and crumbling before this. The blood revealed a hidden door. Behind the door is a tank of heating oil. She smashes the tank and lights the oil on fire as He tries to stop her. A ball of fire engulfs the house and everyone in it. She burns, like the opening scene.

The Husband is untouched by the fire. He carries Her through what’s left of the house. She asks, “who are you?”

He answers, “I? I am *some ridiculous answer I rage-blocked* life? the Word? the Light?” IDK, I was pretty mad he didn’t get blasted too. Then He says, “And you? You are Home.” Blech.

He puts her on the floor in his study. She says, “You didn’t love me, you only loved how much I loved you.”

He’s all yeah, so long and thanks for all the fish. That part is not verbatim.

She beautifully dies and crumbles to ash after he manually reaches into her chest cavity, pulls out her heart, and gets another glowing glass knickknack out of it.

She blows away into nothing and He puts his decorative item back on the shelf.

There is a new dawn. The house and woods around it are restored. The bed rises from ashes with a female figure in it. Same shape, same Nordstom organic linen nightgown, same wig.

Woman rolls over–a different woman, but she calls out to her Husband with the same voice.

Roll the end credits to a slow version of 60s Skeeter Davis song The End of the World covered by Patti Smith.

TL:DR: He’s God, she’s either Mrs. God or Mother Earth. People ruin paradise, despoil Mother-God, and literally eat their only begotten son. She wipes everything out, but God starts the cycle again.