Review: Mum and Dad

A bizarre epidemic has parents across America suddenly and violently attacking their children. Nic Cage and Selma Blair play a pair of somewhat stressed out parents who suddenly have an urge to stalk and kill their kids, with Lance Henriksen appearing late as the grandfather.

Based on the cast and trailer for this 2018 piece of schlock, I knew it wasn’t going to be a good film. In fact, it looked like a deliberate attempt at making a bad film like “Plan 9 From Outer Space” or “The Room” (Which never works on purpose, so stop trying!). Having watched the film…yeah, it’s somehow even worse than I expected. If you’ve ever seen the Randy Quaid cannibal nuclear family movie “Parents” (it’s actually not bad), you might be ahead of the game with this wannabe cult flick’s plot. It’s basically “Parents” crossed with “The Crazies” or something. Writer-director Brian Taylor of Neveldine/Taylor infamy (“Crank”, “Crank: High Voltage”) ought to stick to making hyper-action movies with his buddy, because whatever the hell this was, I wasn’t buying in.

The characters played by Nic Cage (who is hardly in the first 30 minutes) and Selma Blair come off as pathetic in the extreme. I know Blair has a lot of health issues these days, but based solely off her performance here you’d swear this was her first film. Some people love watching Cage go nutso on screen, I find it irritating and pathetic. Together, the two thesps pitch themselves at 11 from the get-go, so surely even fans of Cage’s nutty antics will tire quickly this time out (That said, a lot of critics do seem to like the film. Make up your own mind). Also, their behaviour isn’t remotely consistent and not in any intentionally funny kind of way. They simply stop acting psycho to all of a sudden discuss the purchase of firearms and the inherent danger firearms bring to the children they’re currently trying to kill. I get the gag, it’s just dreadfully unfunny, and not in a moralistic ‘this is sick’ way. I just wasn’t laughing. At all. I think part of that is because for the most part, the film’s actually not even a comedy. Like, it’s not even trying to be 90% of the time. The trailer made it look like a black comedy, but I think it’s more of a sci-fi/horror film with a couple of supposedly satirical bits.

The cinematography by Daniel Pearl (“The Texas Chainsaw Massacre”) is nice, and the opening credits design and Bond-ish ballad give off a fun early 70s vibe. Otherwise, this is shrill, annoying, and one-note. In fact, even the soundtrack ends up overbearing. The whole film is trying too hard, and yet at the same time it’s completely enervated and tedious because of it. It’s also appallingly slow for a film that runs less than 90 minutes. It takes forever to get to the crux (despite the aforementioned overpitched acting from the very start), and I think that’s because the crux is really just a one-joke idea. It should’ve been a short film, it’s beyond obvious that Taylor can’t stretch this one to feature length. He also offers up zero explanation for what is going on. Are they inherently evil? Have their hidden urges been awakened somehow? Is it some collective hysteria turning normal people into psychos? Pod people? Who knows, here’s Nic Cage singing about ‘Buffalo Girls’ and shouting like an idiot. Enjoy. I’m pretty sure Cage turns into the dog from “Cujo” at one point, but don’t let that fool you into thinking it’s somehow an entertaining experience.

A constantly hyper approach and a thin script result in an entirely tedious, frequently irritating experience. Unfunny, un-scary, uninteresting with characters who seem unhinged before anything has supposedly even happened to them. Dud, yet amazingly it’s not Cage’s worst film of the year. That distinction goes to the almost unwatchable “Mandy”.

Rating: D