Mom and Dad

The Ryan's are a normal family with typical problems. Teenage Carly is defiant, abrasive as hell, and no longer confides in her mother. She fights with her little brother Josh, who is young and rambunctious. Parents Brent and Kendall mourn their lost dreams sacrificed to be parents and raise their family. Amidst their drama, something is making parents rage filled monsters whose only motivation is to kill their own children.

Mom and Dad is a crazy, over the top movie with a premise to match. The very first scene has a mother leave her car (containing her child) on the train tracks just before a train goes by. It's bold and tells the audience immediately what kind of film it is. Afterwards, the Ryan's are shown in their normal life with bickering kids and unfulfilled parents. Carly is an insufferable teen with nothing but disdain for her parents. She feels no guilt about stealing right from her mother's purse or saying purposefully hurtful things just to get a reaction. I felt a lot of sympathy for Brent and Kendall because society feeds people that the norm is having children. Both of them envisioned something else for their lives despite having conventional successes as a business man and a stay at home mom. They are unhappy and frustrated, a typical state for suburban parents. Both tried to do something to change up their lives (Brent built a pool table and Kendall tried to get her old job as a graphic designer back), but their attempts fail miserably.

The disease or contagion causing parents to savagely kill their children is never identified. Some random static appears on electronics preceding this behavior, but it's never said what it is or how it seems to affect anything technological. Parents' first instinct in an emergency is to find and protect their children. This contagion completely weaponizes this instinct. It starts out with come parents acting oddly at the high school, hovering outside of the SAT testing place and outside of the school. This behavior isn't completely strange because some parents actually do this on a daily basis (usually for smaller kids at the schools where I teach). Suddenly, the parents basically riot and physically fight anyone who gets in the way of them and their children. They act like killing their children is completely normal and otherwise act normally. The pandemonium following is gruesome and brutal. The child I felt most for was Carly's boyfriend Damon. His father is clearly an alcoholic that Damon has to care for. It's heartbreaking to watch Damon defend himself from and accidentally kill his father. The actions were necessary, but the result accidental.

Once Kendall and Brent are affected by the signal or disease, all hell breaks loose. Both parents go from struggling, unhappy, and exasperated to the happiest we see them in the movie since their teen years. Nicholas Cage is at his most extreme here and makes the film so much fun with how far he's willing to take the character. Before he's even infected, he destroys the pool table he built while screaming the Hokey Pokey. Afterwards, Brent and Kendall get along nicer than they have in years, united against their children. Kendall is slightly less insane and even has some fleeting moments of fighting the urge to kill. The last quarter of the film is a cat and mouse game with the kids trying to survive their parents' attacks that involve an infomercial saw, flooding the basement with gas, and a meat tenderizer. Apparently, all parents are affected, so Brent's parents also try to kill him. Lance Henricksen plays Brent's dad and almost matches Cage's insanity.

Mom and Dad is violent, insane fun. Some of the violent situations seemed a bit sanitized for my taste. If the filmmakers are going to touch on taboo subjects, they should be delved into instead of backed away from. The ending is abrupt and makes it seem like the creators either wanted a sequel or simply didn't know how to end the film. Carly makes a big transformation throughout the film to be a responsible human being, but I still found her parents to be more compelling characters. If there is a sequel, I'm first in line to watch it for Nicholas Cage alone. By itself, Mom and Dad is a darkly comic film that proves to stand out.

My rating: 4/5 fishmuffins