★★★★☆

DARREN Aronofsky evidently doesn’t believe in an audience sitting comfortably, having made a career out of compelling and stylistic provocation with everything from addiction drama Requiem for a Dream to intense ballet thriller Black Swan to his bold take on the Biblical story Noah. His latest film may be his crowning glory in terms of unsettling the viewer.

We start with a young woman (Jennifer Lawrence, credited only as “Mother”) waking up in her bed and calling out for her successful poet husband (Javier Bardem, credited only as “Him”). They live a seemingly idyllic life in a remote house that she is helping rebuild and redecorate after a terrible fire almost burnt it to the ground during her husband’s early years.

Late one evening their tranquil existence is intruded upon when they hear a knock at the door from a mysterious stranger (Ed Harris, credited as “Man”) claiming to be a doctor who has just arrived in the area. As it turns out, he is one of the poet’s fans and has nowhere to stay.

After some pleasant chit-chat over drinks, Him invites the Man to stay the night. Initially unsettled by letting someone she doesn’t know sleep in her home, Mother reluctantly agrees. But she soon starts to regret that decision as the stranger’s wife (Michelle Pfeiffer, credited only as “Woman”) also turns up, rudely enquiring on intimate details about her marital age difference, sex life and lack of children.

The fact that Aronofsky’s unquestionably bold film not only straddles but violently smashes together multiple genres is a rare thing to be cherished, even if its craziness outweighs the metaphorical meanings that it is ultimately supposed to embrace, from the significance of motherhood, the dangers of fanaticism and the philosophy of rebirth.

Is it an enigmatic domestic drama? An existential horror? A home-invasion thriller? Or all of the above and more? It’s the cinematic equivalent of wanting to cover every genre while purposefully – sometimes rewardingly, sometimes frustratingly – leaving the audience’s head spinning as it works its way up from a slow burn to all-out bewildering mania that is far from interested in giving you all the answers.

Aronofsky shrewdly plays around with expectations of how we’re going to navigate this mystery shrouded tale, giving us a seemingly safe leading anchor in a story that manically unravels as the minutes tick by.

Bardem is impressive as Him: is it Mother’s imagination that he’s acting strangely or is he succumbing to the fandom afforded to him by the stranger and potential success tantalisingly dangling in front of him if he could only get past his writer’s block?

Like many things, throughout it’s never clear. But ultimately it’s Lawrence’s film; barely a moment goes by when she’s not on-screen and she commands it with a performance that becomes more intrepid as the film progresses.

There will be as many people who love Mother as loathe it but either way you won’t forget it in a hurry, as it thrusts a barrage of striking imagery – blood rotting through wood like an infested wound, a blackening, beating heart that seems to belong to the house itself – that reflects the narrative in all its shrieking, symbolically religious grandeur.

It’s a film that demands you not only pay attention but give yourself over to it in a more primal way, to let the disturbing atmosphere and the intense, fascinating and yes, sometimes rather silly, frenzy sweep you up for a bonkers experience that’s as confounding as it is audacious.