Mother!” was supposed to be the next Jennifer Lawrence hit film with Darren Aronofsky in the director’s chair. However, that didn’t happen, although the movie has a fresh 69 percent rating on rotten tomatoes.

Even the powerhouse cast of Lawrence, Ed Harris and Michelle Pfeiffer wasn’t enough to draw that much attention, earning less than half of the film’s $30 million budget as of Sept. 17.

So why did “Mother!” flop at the box office? Here are some of the reasons audiences weren’t too keen on watching this dark psychological horror film.

‘Mother!’ was hated by audiences

Even though the film was somewhat praised by critics, audiences felt otherwise. In fact, “Mother!” was given an “F” rating on CinemaScore, which is a platform where audiences can rate movies via letter grades.

A film having an “F” rating is very rare especially in a movie with a star-studded cast like “Mother!” In fact, critically panned movies such as “The Emoji Movie” and “The Dark Tower” received higher ratings than “Mother!” This might be a contributing factor to the film’s mediocre ticket sales.

The film’s story was a bit confusing

Another reason for the movie’s box office flop is the fact that the story was very confusing for a lot of people and was open to several interpretations.

According to Mashable, if you ask 10 different people what “Mother!” was about you might get six different answers. The film’s story is said to be a retelling of the Bible, where Lawrence’s character represented Mother Earth while God was represented by actor Javier Bardem.

This type of story might play very well in film schools around the world in the years to come where students can analyze every minute of the film.

However, this kind of movie doesn’t necessarily attract many moviegoers.

‘Mother!’ competed with the 2017 adaptation of Stephen King’s ‘It’

Probably the final nail in the coffin was when “Mother!” was released and directly competed with Stephen King’s “It.”

The initial release of “Mother!” was actually pushed back to avoid competition.

However, the film’s creators never realized that move would put them in the path of “It,” which broke several records in terms of ticket sales.

In fact, “It” became the highest grossing September release of all time with a total of more than 218 million dollars. In addition, “It” was praised by both critics and audiences alike. This meant that moviegoers will likely see a horror movie they heard was actually good.