Jennifer Lawrence “Freaked Out” Producers While Filming Mother!

In a new interview with Vulture, Darren Aronofsky cautioned that his new movie, Mother!, might be too intense for unsuspecting viewers. “It’s like a cruise missile shooting into a wall, this film,” he says. He continues by declaring that he “want[s] audiences to be prepared for that and prepped that it’s a very intense ride.”

Aronofsky has made a career out of profoundly unsettling audiences, from Black Swan to Requiem for a Dream. But he seems to think that Mother! is in a different league. A psychological horror film, it follows Jennifer Lawrence as she discovers her cozy life with her husband (Javier Bardem) isn’t what she thought it was. And apparently the role required an extreme performance from Lawrence. Aronofsky recalls:

“I think she hyperventilated and also kind of threw a rib out. During the big climax of the movie, I mean, she started … She really went there. The producers were freaking out. We had to sort of calm it down and then go for it again. And the thing is, there’s so much ability there that somehow she can summon it again and again.”

So on top of all the rest of it, Lawrence evidently brings the intensity so well that she scared people who already knew the story.

Aronofsky ends the interview by saying that the film is ultimately about a lack of control, about knowing something is amiss but not being able to fix it:

“There are these huge forces that are happening that you can look at and go, That’s wrong, and yet, no matter how much I scream about it, there’s nothing I can do, and it keeps happening. I just wanted the movie to howl at the moon.”

Yeah, this movie sounds pretty crazy. You can watch the trailer below. Mother! is out on Sept. 15.