Mothers' Instinct

“Mothers’ Instinct” gets by on its pulpy potential more than anything else.

The movie that is is disappointingly bloodless, cold rather than chilling, with a payoff that isn’t shocking so much as an admission that we’ve spent 90 minutes we’ll never get back.

It is slickly made and thoroughly entertaining, flamboyant flourishes and all. But it seems that, with a few minor exceptions, no one really knows what to do with movies like it anymore.

The characters in Mothers’ Instinct have no convincing inner lives at all, but the exterior work of the actors playing them is choice stuff.

The misconceived but morbidly entertaining Mothers’ Instinct is far too slapdash to respect the seriousness of its premise, but at the same time also far too serious to indulge in the campiness of its plot.

Spiked with twisted turns, explosive emotions, and a feud that's frightening and fun to behold, it's a thriller well worth its gnashed teeth and salty tears.

To say the third act is an utter hogslop mess is to grossly underplay the messiness of hog slop.

Mothers' Instinct delivers a tense, compelling, and thrilling story that leads to constant guessing and reassessing about what could be true.

This Jessica Chastain and Anne Hathaway thriller relies on stereotypes it never gets round to subverting.

The movie still wobbles under the unfortunate weight of obvious plot holes and lapses in logic....But it’s still Chastain and Hathaway – two actresses who make everything they’re in worth seeing. It’s no different here.