Eddie here. Tonight I'm reviewing the 2018 dark-comedy film Mom and Dad directed by Brian Taylor (Crank and Crank: High Voltage) and stars Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair. A teenage girl and her brother try to survive a wild 24-hours during which a mass hysteria of unknown origins causes parents to turn violent on their own children. When I saw the trailer to this film months ago, I actually thought it looked like tons of fun. Before I get my head chewed since some people liked it, I do enjoy fun dark-comedy films that aren't trying to take themselves seriously. I absolutely loved Crank and Crank: High Voltage. Unfortunately, I was extremely disappointed in this movie. I felt like this film didn't have that fun factor that I desperately was looking forward to. It has a good premise with the parents turning violent on their kids; almost like a reverse Children of the Corn. I guess it didn't help that it takes up to 48 minutes for all the crap to finally hit the fan. The pacing was a major downer for me. I did like the gore, but most of the really gory parts don't really come until the third-act. Most of the other kills are pretty much off-screen where you see the blood after-the-fact. I expected it to be way more grittier than what I watched. I felt like the story was very uninteresting and it gave me quite the headache as the film went along; most of which came from a bunch of scenes that just popped out of nowhere that felt like it didn't go with the story. For example: the part where the kids are hiding out in the basement and then they see a broken pool table, then it says three weeks earlier and we get a long drawn out scene where Nicolas Cage and his wife are arguing over him spending money on a pool table that goes on and on for 15 minutes. Throughout the film, stuff like this happens and I just felt like it's dragging the movie to a doable run-time. I heard people say they love Nicolas Cage in this film. I enjoyed him, but it seems that the mother is mainly the focus until the end. We do get the Nicolas Cage charades that we've seen in films such as Face/Off and Bad Lieutenant. I'll admit, I was looking forward to that. I did like the ending where the grandparents showed up and seeing Nicholas Cage and Lance Henriksen go at it was pretty funny. Unfortunately, that was short-lived. It didn't help that I was painfully uninterested to where I couldn't even get into the big family fight at the end. It's kind of strange how the film abruptly ends out of nowhere too to the point that I had to make sure I had the whole movie. I'm glad some people out there liked it, but it was absolutely unwatchable for me.
Final Grade:
What were your thoughts on this film? Leave me a comment below and I'll see you on my next review.