Mom and Dad (2018)

[baumer]

Discuss

[Avatree]

Nicolas Cage has done a lot of straight to DVD type movies in the past few years, and most of them suck. Some of them are OK.

But this is easily the best he's done in ages. It's a really strong horror film. It has a straightforward premise that it sees through to the end, it's short and tight, it's properly scary, and at the appropriate times it is really funny.

 

Nicolas Cage is full on Nicolas Cage, with the voice and the eyes and the face and everything. Although it's worth pointing out he's not the main character.

 

I thought the frenetic editing worked really well. Whatever it is that's making the parents go savage to kill their children, it's on and off. So when the adults are calm, the camera moves gently, and it has dull generic score. But as soon as the parents start thinking about their kids, the camera is flying sideways, it's cutting every two seconds, and this awful dubstep/techno music starts pumping. 

It sounds retarded but somehow it works really well.

 

It doesn't spend any time asking what the cause is, but it's something you think about. The kids act like pricks to their parents, because well that's what we all do, and the parents are having mid life crises of their own. If it had started to resolve that mystery, it would have been getting tangled in plot threads and it might be dumping exposition on our heads. Instead, it just sticks to its premise, and that makes it feel tout. Sometimes less is more.

 

There are some very uncomfortable scenes of violence, but it's never upsetting. It gets the balance right of being distasteful but not putting you off. Also some very creepy shots e.g. parents gawping at the window of a maternity ward where the newborns are kept.

 

It's really well balanced in every respect. Also, best use of Erasure ever.

 

 

 

Edited March 10, 2018 by Treetanic