‘mother!’ Earned A Rare, Terrible Grade From Audiences That Might Impact It At The Box Office

As our own Mike Ryan already told you in his TIFF review, Jennifer Lawrence’s new film mother! is guaranteed to be divisive for viewers. Critics, have largely given the film positive, or at least mixed, reviews — audiences, however, are a whole different story.

The film, which opened this past Friday and has already received an almost unanimous grade of complete failure via the CinemaScore audience polling service. CinemaScore is a Las Vegas-based company that administers brief six question ballots to audiences every weekend in an attempt to get their take on brand new films, and see if these reactions can help predict box office returns.

It’s actually quite a rare feat for a film to garner an “F” grade, and a couple of the only other films who have received this, uh, distinction are Steven Soderbergh’s Solaris remake, Andrew Dominik’s Killing Them Softly, William Friedkin’s Bug and I Know Who Killed Me.

mother! is Darren Aronofsky’s latest psychological thriller starring the aforementioned Jennifer Lawrence, Javier Bardem, Ed Harris, and Michelle Pfeiffer. Lawrence and Bardem are a (childless) couple who move into a new house that Lawrence has renovated, before the creepy Harris and Pfeiffer show up to bring on the bloody drama.

Aronofsky’s previous work has been quite successful, as some of his past projects include Black Swan and Requiem For A Dream. And, as far as earnings go, the film is still doing relatively well. Box Office Mojo has it at a cool $3 million after one day in theaters, which is a nice chip away at the film’s $30 million budget. According to this pacing, it should earn about $12 million in during the course of opening weekend.