Finally, the world is being treated to Nicolas Cage’s The Shining. His character in Mom And Dad doesn’t stay in a ghoul-infested hotel; Cage prefers to do that when he’s not working. But he does go spectacularly bugfuck wackadoodle, attempting to smash down a door so he can murder his kids on the other side. In a nice touch, it’s not an axe he’s wielding, Jack Torrance-style, but a dweeby-looking power tool called a Sawzall. “IT’S A SAWZALL,” screams Cage, eyes bulging, at his terrified offspring, “BECAUSE IT SAWS ALL!”
As you may have ascertained from that description, this is not a subtle piece of work. The director is not Stanley Kubrick (whose ouevre contains few monologues about anal beads, another memorable moment gifted to Cage here) but Brian Taylor, the stuntman-turned-moviemaker who previously convinced Jason Statham to have sex on a racetrack as horses gallop by for Crank 2: High Voltage, and who cast Milo Ventimiglia in Gamer as a character named Rick Rape. The seed of Mom And Dad is the kind of horror high concept another director might have teasingly build up to: a staticky TV signal triggers parents to start assaulting their children. Here, barely ten minutes pass before a school is under siege by dead-eyed grown-ups, and an unlucky teen is subjected to death by car-keys. As for Cage’s Brent Ryan, an exhausted yuppie disgusted by his own middle age, he’s already going loco way before the TV’s been switched on, doing silent screams and fantasising about doing donuts in a Pontiac Firebird while a topless woman pushes her breasts in his face.
As a horror movie it’s undisciplined, but as a vehicle for Cage it’s an absolute blast.
As a horror movie it’s undisciplined, bogged down with flashbacks and light on cunningly crafted set-pieces, though there are a few haunting shots, such as a line of new fathers staring malevolently into an infant ward. But as a vehicle for Cage it’s an absolute blast. Having worked with Taylor before on Ghost Rider: Spirit Of Vengeance, he clearly trusts the director enough to turn in a performance even more extreme than usual. (Brent is not only loopy, but for part of the runtime has Froot Loops stuck to his face.) And once the action telescopes in, shifting from a wider vista to the claustrophobic confines of the family house for the film’s second half, it becomes an engaging, raucous battle between father, mother (Selma Blair, making a good fist of keeping up with Cage), daughter and son. Rather than becoming mindless zombies, the adults retain their usual personalities, just with a more rage-filled spin, resulting in some amusing breaks from the carnage to discuss domestic affairs.
There’s an inspired late twist, some OTT gore involving a coathanger and some muscular, zippy camerawork. It’s just hard not to feel that it’s a slightly wasted opportunity — with a tighter script and higher production values, perhaps it could actually have been Nicolas Cage’s The Shining.
