Mom and Dad (2017)

 

The Ryans are a family of four with a strained relationship. Father Brent disapproves of his teenage daughter's (slightly) older boyfriend. Mother Kendall is keenly aware of the emotional distance developing between her and both her husband and her daughter, Carly. Her efforts to resolve both merely seem to exacerbate Brent's frayed temper and Carly's scorn. Only young son Josh seems more or less content, though his habit of getting into things he shouldn't do causes occasional flare-ups from the other members of the family.

Despite all that, though, they are a family and they love each other. Nothing could make any of them turn on the others. Particularly not the parents on their children, right?

Right?

Well that, of course, is exactly the scenario presented in this entertaining little comedy-horror. Somehow, through unknown means, a wave of madness is spreading. It turns the fierce love (most) parents feel for their children into savage, violent hatred. Parents across the city are engaging in brutal acts of filicide. But it only their own children who are at risk. Their behaviour toward other people is wholly unaffected.

It's going to be volatile times at the Ryan household, today ...

Despite its child-murdering premise, Mom and Dad is surprisingly fun horror comedy. ... provided you like your comedy black, that is!  It has a straight-forward hook that I think will resonate with most people.  Almost everyone has parents or children or both, and while some families are obviously much more deeply dysfunctional than the Ryans, the ideal of a more-or-less functional family is one that we see depicted in fiction all the time.

The movie profits hugely from the pairing of Selma Blair and Nicholas Cage as Mom and Dad, respectively.  The script gives Cage plenty of scope to indulge his renowned ability for histrionic, impassioned ranting, and then neatly juxtaposes Brent's always-on-the-verge-of-exploding mania with Kendall's far more considered and thoughtful approach to child-murdering.  They make a fun double act, especially as the script slyly shows their joint homicidal efforts helping them to reclaim some of the affection and camaraderie that the years of middle-class drudgery have ground away.

Blair and Cage are ably complemented by the younger cast members.  Anne Winters is good as the initially resentful and self-absorbed Carly, who suddenly finds herself thrust into the role of her young brother's protector.  Zachary Arthur is similarly good as young Josh, who wants nothing more than for things to go back to normal.

The script smartly keeps the run time lean - less than 90 minutes - and eschews too much graphic on-screen violence in favour of merely suggesting what happened, such as by the presence of a thick pool of blood on the kitchen floor, or a gory baseball bat clutched in a man's hand.  It also saves its most manic sequence for the final act, building to it through the elder Ryan's escalating efforts to slaughter poor Carly and Josh.

I enjoyed this.  Recommended for fans of horror-comedy, as well as for those who just enjoy Nick Cage being his most Nick Cage-like.