'Mom and Dad' Lets Nicolas Cage Be Appropriately Bonkers and Hammy

I think that when kids get too obnoxious, there will be times when their parents – especially when tired and stressed – wish they could strangle or beat them to death.  No matter how much parents genuinely love their children, they are nonetheless human; and when their kids really get under their nerves, a bestial impulse buried in the id – that is, killing their children, the source of their exasperation and irk at that moment – is tapped, and that it’s only not entertained further and carried out because of the rational and moral restraints of the ego and super-ego.

Mom and Dad explores a plot where these aforementioned restraints are removed all of a sudden, due to a mysterious static, causing parents to become consumed with the desire of brutally killing their own children.

Some outside stimuli – a radio signal, a virus, etc. – driving people to unrestrained aggression and violence is not an unknown story concept (some examples where this was used are Cell, Mayhem, and 28 Days Later).  But this movie’s parental angle makes it a fresh spin.

Nicolas Cage plays the eponymous “Dad” of the movie. It’s an inspired casting choice as Mom and Dad is the kind of movie where Cage’s signature bonkers, hammy acting is not only appropriate, but can really thrive.  And it indeed does.

Opposite him is Selma Blair’s “Mom”, who I haven’t seen in a film since Hellboy 2.  She wasn’t exactly a showstopper, but she gave a solid performance, and it was nice to see Liz Sherman again.

Overall, Mom and Dad is a ludicrous movie.  It isn’t great.   But I do find it entertaining and interesting.  And with the year still early, it’s actually a standout.  Just like Mayhem, a somewhat similar (but superior) film, it succeeds to be enjoyable and even thoughtful with its violent urbane-people-degenerating-into-mayhem setup by not opting to be a straight-up horror thriller, but a dark comedy.

I guess by having Nicolas Cage as lead, you can’t have such movie any other way. Either embrace the comedy or be an unintentional comedy (by being “so bad that it’s good”).  It’s amazing that this kind of forethought is the single difference-maker for this particular movie to end up being all right rather than crappy.