featured
Film Review
'Mom and Dad' TIFF 2017 Review: Parents to die for
September 25, 2017Siobhán Finn
|
TIFF’s Midnight Madness programme has long been an important destination for many genre directors. And this year, audiences appreciative of blood, gore and irony have been treated to a film that meets all those criteria, with a career-defining performance by cult-favorite actor Nicolas Cage to boot. Best described as The Purge for parents, Mom and Dad follows Carly (Anne Winters), a teenager who, midway through the school day, encounters a problem bigger than popularity or the money she stole from her mother’s wallet. The adults in her town have become single-mindedly murderous toward their offspring, and, worried about her little brother, Josh (Zachary Arthur), Carly races home. Discovering her worst fears confirmed, she finds that her own parents (Cage and Selma Blair) have also become homicidal, and that survival will be no easy task. Although the cause of the parents’ rampage is never full explained, writer/director Brian Taylor takes the premise and gleefully runs with it. With a great third act gag and fantastic chemistry between Cage and Blair — the former of whom goes "full Cage" — Mom and Dad has set a new high bar for films about filicide. |
Mom and Dad is receiving its world premiere as part of TIFF 2017's Midnight Madness programme. Its runtime is 1 hr. 23 min.
0 comments