Mother’s Day, 2010.
Directed by Darren Lynn Bousman.
Starring Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Briana Evigan, Patrick Flueger, Warren Kole, Matt O’Leary, Deborah Ann Woll, Shawn Ashmore, Frank Grillo, Lisa Marcos, Lyriq Bent, Tony Nappo, Kandyse McClure and Jessie Rusu.
SYNOPSIS:
Three brothers return to their childhood home to take refuge following a botched bank robbery but find the property under new ownership. After taking the owners and their guests hostage, the brothers call upon their psychotic mother to help them deal with the situation.
For a new homeowner, I can’t imagine there’s anything much worse than throwing a party for a few friends in your new abode, only to have the previous occupants turning up at your door in the middle of the night – especially when the previous occupants are a trio of violent criminals, one of whom has taken a bullet to the chest and is bleeding out, Reservoir Dogs-style, all over your leather sofa. However, that’s exactly the scenario facing a couple and their guests in Mother’s Day – a loose remake/update of the Charles Kaufman’s obscure 1980 Troma horror of the same name from filmmaker Darren Lynn Bousman, the man responsible for the last decent Saw movie (Saw II) and the subsequently piss-poor sequels, Saw III and Saw IV.
When a trio of bank-robbing brothers are double-crossed on their latest job (leaving the youngest sibling with a gaping hole in his chest), they return to their childhood home to seek refuge with the head of their psychotic brood, ‘Mother’ (Rebecca De Mornay; The Hand that Rocks the Cradle). Unfortunately, Mother has upped and left after losing possession of the house and the new owners, Beth (Jaime King; Sin City) and Daniel (Frank Grillo; Prison Break), are busy hosting a party of thirty-something Saw alumni (Lyriq Bent, Tony Nappo and Jessie Rusu) and familiar horror faces such as Briana Evigan (Sorority Row), Kandyse McClure (Children of the Corn) and Iceman from X-Men (Frozen). Seeing no alternative, the brothers take the partygoers hostage and call upon reliable old Mother to help them clean up the mess and escape across the border.
As Rohan Morbey pointed out in his review of Trespass here on Flickering Myth, films such as these often run the risk of running out of steam early on, forcing them to rely on a string of clichés and tried-and-tested plot elements to get them through to the end credits. Bousman does try to shake things up a little with the inclusion of De Mornay’s character, and what starts out as your typical self-contained home-invasion thriller quickly descends into Saw-levels of sadism (well, Saw-lite, maybe) as the deranged family put the guests through increasing levels of physical and psychological terror. Still, much of the film feels overly familiar (the police turning up at the door before leaving, marital problems with the hostages, disputes between the kidnappers, etc.) and the story is little more than an excuse to take us from one torture scene to the next, each one upping the ante in terms of brutality until the inevitable fight-back from whichever of the hostages are still breathing.
In fairness to Mother’s Day, while it fails to offer anything new, what it does do, it does quite well. The cast perform admirably with what little they have to play with and despite becoming a little repetitive towards the end, the narrative does contain plenty of gruesome moments and even manages to throw in a few surprises to keep us on our toes. If you’re looking for something new to make you squirm in your seat this Halloween then you could do worse than Mother’s Day, but expect a yawn or two along the way.
Gary Collinson (follow me on Twitter)
Originally published October 24, 2011. Updated April 12, 2018.
