Mom and Dad

Selma Blair and Nicolas Cage are Mom and Dad

Brian Taylor's Mom and Dad is a black comic horror film that chronicles a mysterious hysteria that causes parents to hunt and kill their children. The film has its moments of gleeful abandon, but does not coalesce into a comprehensible entity. Taylor has planted a few interesting ideas in the script, particularly about the resentments parents feel towards their offspring, but is not able to present his ideas into a intelligible narrative. Taylor is so intent on evoking the freneticism of his plot, as he did in Crank, that he sacrifices coherence. Taylor is overly enamored of huge close-ups that suggest terror, but do not add to our understanding of the characters or plot.

Mom and Dad suffers from a slow and clumsy exposition. Once Mom and Dad, Selma Blair and Nicholas Cage, start hunting their prey the pace picks up, but we never are emotionally invested in the carnage and who it destroys or why. Nicholas Cage is always fun when he gets to chew the scenery and Robert Cunningham is a newcomer to watch, but Mom and Dad, despite its exertions, adds up to very little.