Also rented (on iTunes) a comedy horror film called Mom and Dad. I rented it because A) it stars Nicholas Cage, B) the screen capture had him looking wonderfully nuts, C) the tagline is, “They brought you into this world, they can take you out”, and D) it’s literally about parents going crazy and trying to kill their kids. I figured between the cheeky (if cliched) tagline and crazy Nicholas Cage in full-on crazy Nicholas Cage mode, this could be a fun little horror flick that flips the old trope of killer kids on its head.
Alas, it’s not a very good movie and the main reason is tone. Yes, Nicholas Cage goes full Nicholas Cage and his performance will be the center of future examples of Cage being weird. So that’s good. And there are scenes of teenagers on the run from crazy parents that are fun… since those teens disrespect their parents and steal from their wallet etc. There’s an ongoing theme of the parents not having the lives they thought they would as teenagers themselves… It’s like the screenwriter was a parent working out some issues.
But the movie makes some mistakes by showing a woman giving birth and immediately trying to murder her newborn which isn’t really particularly fun. In a movie that has to walk a fine line of good vs. bad taste in a plot that’s entirely in bad taste, it was a mistake.
It also didn’t help that it’s soundtrack was a dub-step nightmare. In order to show how unhinged the parents were, the film unceasingly blared horrid dub-step which didn’t remotely help the movie’s cause. It was noise on top of over-acting adults and really hurt the feel or flow of the flick.
Nicholas Cage is joined here by Selma Blair as the crazy parents. They are acting in two different movies, granted… Cage in his own freakout world and Blair playing more down-to-earth but struggling with her desire to murder her teenage daughter. Hers is a pretty good performance, his is just nuts and fun. Lance Henrikson makes a welcome genre cameo as well.
Overall, the movie just doesn’t work in full. It’s tone problems and soundtrack sabotage it. It does have a sense of the kind of fun, nutty horror movie that it wants to be but it can’t maintain it. Having these parents try to ice their bratty teenagers is fun in a message-y sort of way…. having them try to kill babies, not so much.
Score: 68