Mom and Dad (2018)

The idea of this film is actually pretty cool. Whoever came up with it, I applaud you! Great job, really. It was neat seeing the parents talking normally well trying to hack away at their kids. It added somewhat of a creepy factor to it. But that's about the end of the good graces...This show is POORLY written. Every single character in this movie is a complete dick for unknown reasons, even the extras. Flipping each other off, being rude, complaining, back-talking. There was honestly 0 likable characters in this show. One character sees a complete bloodbath happen and laughs, goes home, and makes food/drugs...I mean, what? The start jumps between characters in different locations so much that I got lost. Then we are bombarded with flashbacks that have no relevance. Why do we need a 5 minute flashback of someone destroying something in order to explain why the basement is messy? There is also so many scenes that have 0 plot influence. They are just thrown in there to fill the time. These scenes are cut into action scenes too. So you will be having this hard core action scene then suddenly cut to a 5 minute flashback of the family having ice cream and talking about what a lovely day it is. Why? Seriously, who thought it was a good idea for them to intercut so many scenes together?The ending, I mean what was that? Good idea just executed very poorly. 100% the writer's and editor's faults. Those people are suppose to be the foundation of every film and with a weak foundation, this movie crumbles. Save your time and watch something else.

But it seems like I might have watched another with the same title, actors and premise as all of these low scores are just baffling, take an original idea and run with it, parents turning on their own children, this is a great little film, not much gore to speak of, most of it is just out of view.Perhaps these low scores belong to the looney left liberal brigade, I dunno.

I got this movie on DVD for my mother (she's a huge Nicolas Cage fan). Before Mum got a chance to watch it though, I had nothing to do and decided to put it on. That was a mistake. I can watch some pretty bad movies before completely losing interest. But with this movie by the ten minute point I started to zone out. The characters were uninteresting and the story wound up going absolutely nowhere.I did save my Mum the pain of watching this though, so some good came of it.

The premise of the film is fairly easy to grasp: what parent hasn't wanted to rhetorically "kill their kid" for the dirtball they are dating, or their disrespectful potty mouth, or the unkempt state of their rooms. This movie uses the horror genre to explore this notion in an extremely literal way. Simple as that. And it is not just an issue with teens; the murderous grandparents showing up, complaining about what a failure Cage is and how horrible the daughter-in-law is, speaks to the generational nature of disappointing offspring. Dr Oz, the truly credible and not-at-all-a-quack TV cardiologist, even spells out that many species in the animal kingdom "savage" their young for a variety of reasons. I like this movie because it shows what a detrimental blight both children and parents are. Nicholas Cage, in particular, typifies this, making his casting and performance both ironic and apropos. Thankfully, Selma Blair is not her usual breathy, navel-gazing self. They both propel a cute and clever script in which only orphans are truly safe.