MOM AND DAD (2018) ****

Mom and Dad is basically Night of the Living Parents.  It seems like the start of an idyllic school day when without warning, parents around the globe snap and kill their kids.  It’s not one of those Biblical things, I don’t think.  It’s not one of those meteor showers deals either.  Or global warming.  It just happens.

I know every parent feels like strangling their kid, especially once they become a teenager, but this is ridiculous.

For Anne Winters and Zackary Arthur, that means trouble.  Why?  Because their mom and dad are played by Nicolas Cage and Selma Blair.  

People talked up Mandy all year saying how great it was, but this just blows it out of the water.  Cage, whether singing the hokey pokey or giving tweaked line readings of simple compound words like “motherfucker”, is badass.  This is truly one of his best performances in a long time. 

We all know how crazy Cage can get when he goes into a full-on Cage Rage (and he does so once again here), but Blair is the real revelation.  She firmly sheds her “good girl” image, first by playing it up like it’s a typical Blair performance and then getting down and twisted with it.  We’ve seen Cage go nuts before.  One of the many joys of the movie is that Blair keeps up with him and never misses a beat.

What makes their performances so great are the little flashbacks that hammer home the stress, frustration, and heartbreak that go into being a parent.  Cage and Blair were people once living their own lives.  Now, they’re just somebody’s parents.  Their children basically erased their identity and have dominated their very existence.  There’s a ring of painful truth to that.  When they go after their young, I can’t say we’re rooting for them, but we see where they’re coming from. 

Right from the ‘70s-style opening credits sequence, you know you’re in for something special.  Directed by Brian Taylor of Neveldine/Taylor (Crank) fame (who also directed Cage in Ghost Rider:  Spirit of Vengeance), Mom and Dad is one gloriously fucked-up movie.  It commits to its zany premise wholeheartedly, going the whole nine yards every step of the way.  The scenes of the kid-killing carnage sweeping the town are fun, but it’s even more effective once the gears shift and the film becomes a taut home invasion thriller in the end and a damn fine one.

Oh, and kudos to the person who dreamt up casting Lance Henriksen as Cage’s dad. 

In a crisis, one’s natural inclination is to get in touch with their parents to reassure them everything’s going to be okay.  Mom and Dad cleverly subverts that instinct and turns it into something truly harrowing.  Taylor takes the most heinous act imaginable and makes it all horrifying, hilarious, and dare I say, somewhat touching.  This is truly a special movie; one of the year’s best.

Oh, and bonus points for having Dr. Oz be the one to explain the plot.