'Mother!' Movie Reviews: Slapped With Grade F by Moviegoers
Darren Aronofsky's psychological thriller "Mother!" starring Jennifer Lawrence and Javier Bardem is one of the few films to ever receive an F CinemaScore from moviegoers in the U.S.
The film received the failing grade on Friday when it opened across theatres in North America. "Mother!" opened at $7.5 million from 2,368 theatres, making it the worst launch of "The Hunger Games" star's career.
Including Aronofsky's film, there are only a few dozen or so titles slapped with the failing grade, many of which had trouble grossing over $15 million at the domestic box office.
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Although moviegoers did not play coy about their distaste for the film, it managed to gain enough good reviews from critics, which earned them a 68% "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
"This is an interesting case of what appears to be a total disconnect between the critics, who have been fairly receptive, and audiences who are collectively giving mother! their unanimous seal of disapproval with some of the lowest audience scores seen for a wide release film," said comScore's Paul Dergarabedian about the disparity between critics' reviews and the audience's ratings.
Dergarabedian believes that the problem lies in how the film was initially marketed. The trailer might have portrayed an ambiguous portrait of the film which audiences most likely misunderstood. Hence, upon actually seeing the movie, the crowd might have been disappointed because they were expecting a different kind of experience.
Several films in the F CinemaScore category are horror titles. William Friedkin's "Bug" and Richard Kelly's "The Box" starring Cameron Diaz and James Marsden are among the horror flicks to receive a failing grade.
Of course, not all horror titles open poorly. "It," the film adaptation of Stephen King's novel, currently holds the record for the highest-grossing opening for the category, earning up to $123.4 million.
Although "Mother!" did poorly domestically, it is expected to do better overseas.
