I do not like this movie. To me it feels less like a crime thriller and a lot more like a slice of life movie. The way that things just sort of seem to happen and how the emotional tone can turn on a dime says "look, isn't this like a real person's life but enhanced!" I've seen people compare Bong Joon-ho to Hitchcock, but this is no Vertigo. While it's a very deliberate and well-made movie, it's left rough and unvarnished on purpose as if to say "hey look at my work of art!" Hitchcock movies have structure and refinement to them, and Mother wants nothing to do with either of those things.
The story plays out in a way to make you think that Do-Joon must be innocent, that the Mother's quest to prove her child-like son is a good boy is correct. It does so by providing one red herring after another until revealing the truth: the lazy cops were right all along. Do-Joon is guilty and the eponymous Mother is even worse. When the police do finally come to the conclusion that they might have been wrong we've already learned they weren't, and now some other character we know only by name is to be convicted by the same broken system. The movie deliberately betrays the audience with its "mystery" and then points and laughs at the audience by telling them someone innocent really will be punished for the crime. Nothing is fair, and you're the villain for trying to defend someone you thought was innocent.
There is no satisfying resolution to this movie. Things just kind of happen, and we are to presume things will continue to just sort of happen after the film stops. No one has a comeuppance, no one really learns anything. None of the main characters are particularly likable, let alone redeemable. Nothing is changed, life just goes on. For what it wants to be, it's good. What it wants to be, is not. This movie isn't entertaining. It's not even really thought provoking. It seems only to be there to emotionally drain and defeat the viewer should they invest themselves in it. Some may call this movie "challenging," but from what I've seen I'd have to call it punishing.
