Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		4.0
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

Mom and Dad Blu-ray Movie Review

The Purge: Kids.

Reviewed by Martin Liebman April 10, 2018

One could think of a million tacky tag lines for Mom and Dad: World War P, Parents Gone Wild, maybe just The Crazies. However one night describe it in a bite-sized idea, though, it’s just a Zombie movie without the rotting flesh, a different spin on one of today’s most popular genres. The film, written and directed by Brian Taylor, who has some legitimate moderately-budgeted movies under his belt, struggles with a pinched budget on this one, even as it offers a mildly interesting premise. While it doesn’t start well thanks to establishing nothing but unlikable characters, the larger story at least sets something with promise in motion. But the movie is just a mess of disjointed scenes with little to show for its efforts beyond another wild-eyed performance from Nic Cage and… not much else.

Eye stab u.

The Ryan family -- father Brent (Nicolas Cage), mother Kendall (Selma Blair), teenage daughter Carly (Anne Winters), and grade school-aged son Josh (Zackary Arthur) -- aren't exactly the model of the perfect family. They bicker amongst one another, curse in front of one another, and Carly isn't above stealing cash from her mother's purse. It's a difficult life, with each of them wanting the world to revolve around them, but everything is about to change when one day, out of the blue and with no explanation, the world goes topsy-turvy. A mysterious television signal -- basic snow by the looks of it -- sets parents into a rage of bloodlust. Their targets: their own children. As the world crumbles, Carly and Josh must fight to survive their parents' relentless onslaught as they take any and all opportunity to try and murder their own children.

Mom and Dad is overplayed and underdeveloped in most every way. It’s not dark, it’s not disturbing, its not funny, it’s not entertaining. It just sort of exists, tells its story with precious little detail, focusing not on causes but rather effects, not on solutions but rather exercises in violence. The underlying mystery, the absence of spelled-out detail about the how’s and the why’s isn’t necessarily a bad thing -- sometimes, some things are just best left unexplained -- but the film’s lack of a resolution is its greatest sin. It literally ends mid scene with no rhyme or reason. It’s not a daring ending, it’s just a dull ending, a confounding conclusion that feels like the editor accidentally dragged and dropped the last five or ten minutes to the trash icon and didn’t notice. Maybe he was on to something and meant to dump the whole thing instead. Who knows.

It’s a movie that is, at best, a curiosity with potential that it never fully realizes and only approaches for a minute or two here and there. To its credit, it’s relatively fast paced, at least when it’s not bogged down by any flashback filler, like a scene depicting Brent carefully constructing a pool table and destroying it when his wife questions his acquisition of it, when a younger Carly is experimenting with her mother's makeup, when Brent teaches Danny a lesson in growing up. The flashbacks only interrupt the flow. It’s not as if the audience needs know that parents love their children and attempting to kill them is out of the norm, that a Saturday night at home is Monopoly, not murder. They’re all unlikable as they are and they're all just figures to drive the plot, and anything that gets in the way of the parents’ quest to murder their children seems only an exercise in extending an already brief runtime. Besides, with the squabbling amongst them and the dysfunction and dissatisfaction with their own lives the established status quo, such scenes only seem to go against the grain again, particularly since with the establishing open one would think the family would eventually come to bloody blows, anyway. It’s a zero-sum movie that is modestly entertaining in spurts but doesn’t quite know what to do with itself for an entire 80 or so minutes.

Mom and Dad Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Mom and Dad's 1080p transfer is fine, fine as in technically proficient but it's nothing really special in the grand scheme of things. The digitally shot film is prone to noise, common in low light, less so with more scene illumination. Detailing is fine. Faces reveal enough in the way of bumps and pores, fine hairs, blood, dirt, and other signs of violence and chaos later on -- even some cereal stuck to Brent's face late in the film -- resulting in some satisfying core texturing. Likewise, various home interior details, both before and after they've been broken, covered in blood, or whatever the case may be, reveal good baseline definition. Ditto various other environmental details, such as outdoor basics or classroom essentials. Colors enjoy healthy saturation and a neutral appearance. Yellow school buses appear vibrant and red blood is a standout when there is enough light to notice, but even in lower light conditions it enjoys enough punch and realism to compliment the movie well enough. Black levels are deep and inky during some nighttime exteriors later in the film, with the exception of a single special effects shot, where blacks look more brown. Skin tones appear fairly accurate. This is by no means a memorable image, but it's certainly adequate as a basic 1080p, digitally sourced image for a modestly budgeted film.

Mom and Dad Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Mom and Dad features a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack. Opening music isn't very loud and not particularly aggressive. It's a little cramped and muddled, reflective of the era timeframe the opening titles for whatever reason try to convey (another film with a strange 70s title sequence that otherwise takes place in the present day, just like Proud Mary). There's essentially no surround information, either. However, general score is more aggressive, and some intense hard Rock riffs that compliment a scene in the 9-minute mark are very edgy and loud, and such generally holds true for music throughout the film. Various sound effects are impressively dynamic and commanding of the larger stage. Piercing tones that signal a parent gone crazy are one example of more intense precision, and some aggressive effects, like fiery blowback, present with adequate low end whomp and push. Surrounds pick up some activity, too. Police sirens, a school alarm blaring in the back and side, and other bits of chaotic din offer a satisfyingly immersive sense of panic and uncertainty as the parents become killers. Dialogue is clear and commands the stage with honest positioning and flawless prioritization.

Mom and Dad Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

This Blu-ray release of Mom and Dad contains no supplemental content. A DVD copy of the film is included with purchase.

Mom and Dad Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Mom and Dad establishes potential as a different kind of Zombie movie, one in which parents are inexplicably brainwashed and have a sudden, singular urge to murder their children. There are a few good ideas in the movie, a couple of which work, several of which come far too predictably, and some on which the movie never capitalizes. It's too bogged down in flashback exposition, isn't bloody enough, isn't bold enough, and ends with a curious, curt cut that resolves nothing. The featureless Blu-ray offers good, albeit not at all noteworthy, video. Ditto audio. Worth a look for the interesting premise, but the execution leaves much to be desired.