Parenting is difficult.

Kids require a lot of time, energy, and patience; teenagers and young adults, maybe more so. (It’s debatable.) As we age, many of us parents may even scrutinize our decisions to have children in the first place. What did we give up and what did we gain? What might our lives have looked like if we didn’t have children at all? This is the great suburban dilemma.

This sentiment is also the concern of the dark horror comedy Mom & Dad (2017). The film isn’t for everyone, so of course I convinced one of my offspring and wife to watch it with me for Father’s Day. I didn’t tell them what it was about or why I chose it because…I like surprises! But I also requested this film specifically, tongue in cheek, because I knew the whole premise of the film is “what would happen if parents everywhere inexplicably decide to hunt down and kill their own children.” 

Heh-heh-heh. What can I say, I like a good bit of irony? And if the practical joke also includes some prime cut spastic rants from Nicolas Cage, well that’s starting to sound like a brilliant Father’s Day gift for this guy. 

Horror comedies can be kind of fun. This film isn’t close to one of the best ever (see Evil Dead 2 or Shaun of the Dead) but I laughed (nervously) throughout and compared to all of the other films Nicolas Cage made in 2017, this is by far the most watchable. 

So, tuck the kids in, turn out the lights, and settle in for…

The World According to Brent Ryan, a.k.a. “Dad”

Brent (Nicolas Cage) is a 40-something WASP married to Kendall (Selma Blair) and the two live in a nice house in an unnamed American suburbia. Brent, a machine parts salesmen, is firmly upper middle class and protective of his rebellious high school daughter, Karly, and takes great pride in his pre-school aged son, Josh, who hangs out in his pajamas all day playing with toy trucks under the supervision of the Asian house cleaner / nanny, Sun-Yi (Sharon Gee). On the surface, everything fits the American dream narrative (2 car garage, a nice lawn, white collar job) but Brent (and Kendall) are both pretty miserable under the surface of their daily life and routines–feeling as if they’ve compromised themselves to become parents and providers.

We don’t know that Brent and Kendall are unhappy, at the outset, but it becomes apparent over the course of the film in character flashbacks, relational conflict, and dialogue.

What we do know, almost from the very beginning of the film, is that each character in this film is a screen-gazer (phones, iPads, televisions run non stop in the background) and that the screens may have begun to emit a strange frequency. Through white noise, static, and digital glitches, the adults in the movie are slowly but surely “activated” (like sleeper cells) and when they become triggered they are transformed from boring work-a-day moms and dad’s to homicidal maniacs with one very specific and singular target for their rage: their children. 

The contagion (whether it’s a terrorist attack or biological phenomenon called “savaging”, the film doesn’t spell it out definitively) works its way through society and parents begin to hunt down and brutally murder their offspring. Not other children or each other–just their own children specifically. The action moves from subtle (a woman abandons her minivan on the train tracks with her child inside) to blatantly violent (an angry mob of parents wait outside of the gates at a local high school). As parents lose control of their nurturing instinct, they stop at nothing and attempt to assassinate their own children. It gets pretty creepy and intense quickly. 

As Brent and Kendall return home from their work day seeking out their own children with violent intent, Karly and her boyfriend have pieced together the danger they are all in, and have returned home to rescue Josh. Most of the rest of the film involves darkly comic attempts by Brent and Kendall to extricate and annihilate their children (who have locked themselves in the basement with Brent’s firearm).

Aside: This was a pretty comic scene where Brent tells his wife about the importance of owning a gun for home safety and how he took measure to keep it in a locked case, unfortunately he chose a password combination his son guessed very easiy, i.e. his own birthday. Kendall gets shot by her son through the door.

As weird as it may seem, Brent and Kendall bond more closely together as they now have a shared goal and enemy–and the children have grown in their appreciation of their “old” (less homicial) parents whom they now realize they have been taking for granted.

In flashbacks, we see how Brent and Kendall feel they have lost their way as people in all they have sacrificed to provide a life for their family. The action plays out like a Tarantino inspired Home Alone hybrid film, where the parents and children cat-and-mouse it out and inflict major damage on one another with hangers, Sawsalls, natural gas explosions, and kitchen knives. The children seem doomed to fall at the overmatched hands of their parents, until…ding-dong, the GRANDPARENTS ARRIVE for their planned dinner!

At this point the extended family has a no-holds barred, WWE style smack-down that destroys sports cars, mid-life hamstrings, kitchen dining sets, and familial goodwill. It’s pretty bonkers. The grandparents take their pound of flesh from Mom and Dad, but in the end, fail to kill them off, and up smeared all over the concrete and front lawn. But the grandkids win in the end, by tying up their parents and holding them captive in the garage.

Their fate, as of today, is unknown, but their murdering condition does not appear imminently curable. While trying to negotiate their release through manipulative passive aggression, it’s apparent that the now-wise kids just aren’t going to be duped again. The film ends with Brent’s unspoken shouted ellipses

“[Kids we love you] But sometimes we just want to…” […KILL YOU…]

The Pool Table is in the Family Room, Not in the Man Cave

One of the best Nicolas Cage freakout scenes ever happens in Mom & Dad. Watch the scene here. Brent is obviously “going through some stuff” and dealing with some unresolved anger issues with the disappointment he is facing in mid-life. The argument he has with Kendall over the expensive unsanctioned pool table he purchased perfectly represents the Zeitgeist for the man whose realized suburban life has left him defeated and deflated.

I can almost hear The Talking Heads Once In A Lifetime playing as soundtrack for this scene (even though the punk aesthetic of Reagan Youth’s Anytown and Brent’s Misfits T-shirt was a right, and savvy decision.) In some ways, this violent anger that seethes under the surface of Brent’s waking life is merely unleashed and embodied through the “terrorist” activation that has lead to these horrific events.  The levee has finally broken, and we are just seeing Brent as his rawest, truest self–untethered from all moral constraints. Strangely, the act of trying to murder his children is a vengeful act for the perceived (but not real) injustices he has suffered for becoming a father. It’s much like Vengeance: A Love Story but without any real justification. Just blind rage.

As Brent smashes his new pool table to oblivion with a sledge hammer, he sings a wild Only-Nic version of the Hokey Pokey and it’s amazing. Five stars.

Please, do yourself this one favor today and watch the scene.

Death By Parent

I didn’t really like watching The Hunger Games and I never read the books because I didn’t like the idea of being entertained by children either being killed or killing each other. Felt a little too Lord of the Flies to me. But that sensibility didn’t really stop me from watching this film (or making my family watch it for Father’s Day). What can I say? I’m full of contradictions. If you’re wondering whether or not you’d be disturbed by this film, I’d bet my money you would (or should) be. Here’s a list of some of the ways in which parents destroyed (or attempted to destroy) their offspring in Mom & Dad, just to give you a sense for it:

• Train crash into car
• Car key stabbing
• Trash bag suffocation
• Tackling / beating (multiple)
• Drowning in a pool
• Choking with a tie
• Aluminum bat
• Wire hanger
• Flung from second story stairwell
• Sawsall
• Gas explosion
• Knife
• Head throttling against ground
• Meat tenderizer
• Nailgun
• Pickaxe

One Beef With It

Other than the violence to children, the main beef I have with Mom & Dad is what feels like a story or plot inconsistency to me. The attack or trigger that turns these loving parents into monsters, at first, appears to make them somewhat mindless zombies whose main objective is to annihilate their offspring. I was on board with that premise. But later we discover that the higher brain function that allows for reasoning, logic, and manipulation / persuasion even is NOT impaired by this impulse or obsession.

For example, the impulse is highly discretionary to one’s own offspring. Kendall is able to protect her newborn niece from her rampaging sister and her sense of her sister’s wrong-doing seems intact. She willingly hands over the baby to authorities who can protect it. But she can’t make the same mental connection or correlation to her own impulses–that if she sees her own children she will likely harm them.

In fact, she purposely tries to seek them out rather than just try to avoid them. OK…well, I supposed a very strong compulsion would do that. A person can rationally know a thing to be true and do its opposite. HOWEVER, I find it hard to believe, even suspending disbelief in a way that enables sci-fi / fantasy / horror its plausibility, that the brain function could basically be completely normal (able to plan, rationalize, discern, discuss, operate etc) and yet still be overpowered in a way that for most is biologically natural (nurturing and caring for one’s offspring). 

It just seems impossible to me. I think they should have just kept the parents as mindless zombies who could not be deterred from their compulsion to kill. But I know this would have constricted the funny dialogue, arguments, and bonding moments between Kendall and Brent. It’s a small beef I suppose, but still a beef.

Firsts for Nicolas Cage Brent Ryan

• Tickle tortures a child
• Builds a custom pool table in his “man cave” basement
• Destroys a pool table (he just built) wearing a Misfits Tshirt
• Sleeps at the office (while porn plays on his computer)
• Wrestling-style one-hand slaps a young man’s head forcefully into the ground
• Brandishes a Sawsall as a weapon
• Gets maced by his mom
• Gets stabbed by his dad
• Barks maniacally while chasing his son.
• Kills both his parents with his car Firebird

Recurrences

• Not exactly experiencing familial bliss (It Could Happen to You, The Weather Man, Stolen, Trespass, Left Behind)
• Upset with teenage daughter’s boyfriend (Rage)
• Treats the wounded (Bringing Out the Dead)
• Destroys his own house through hand-to-hand combat (Raising Arizona)

Quotable

“See that, Josh. Always do what Mom says.” 

“Sun-Yi take my advice, don’t ever have kids.” [She already has one whom he is staring at.]

“I get EXACTLY what’s happening. It’s called hormones!” 

“It’s not a MAN CAVE, KENDALL. JESUS!” 

“Maybe there needs to be a fucking grown up zone…and a fucking KID ZONE!” 

“You put your RIGHT FOOT IN. You take your RIGHT FOOT OUT. You do the HOKEY POKEY and you FUCKING WORK IT ALL OUT!” 

“I used to be Brent. You used to be Kendall. Now we’re just Mom & Dad”

“Motherfuckers! You’re going to open this motherfucking door! Karly…Joshy…” [And then he starts inexplicably crying.]

“SAWS. ALL!” 

“Get your claws off me, you goddamn filthy dinosaur.” [To his father.]

Conclusion

In an interview about the film, Nicolas Cage talked about his motivation for appearing in a movie like Mom & Dad: “I have to choose roles that often are eclectic to learn something and challenge myself. Hopefully, I can provide something to the viewer that is different or unique or a new take on something because I was a student of film performance.”

Cage never fails to provide something different and unique for the viewer. It’s not always what you may have wanted or chosen to watch, but are you not entertained? This wild romp of film, and Cage caginess makes up for some (not all) of the truly horrible Cage films in 2017. While it wouldn’t be the first I would recommend to a friend, this film definitely has some merit. Especially when you get to see the Cage do the hokey pokey and turn himself around on an innocent pool table. That’s what it’s all about.