Best thing you’ll see all week: Mom and Dad

Oh, the stress of life in an upper middle class family! It’s the stuff of horror movies, I tell you! The cringeworthy Better Watch Out plays it straightish and comes out poorly, partly for the weak cast. A young psycho takes his babysitter hostage and gore ensues. A far better example is McG’s over-the-top style and lead actress Samara Weaving’s unwavering commitment in the very tongue-in-cheek and just horrific enough The Babysitter. I suppose you could put Get Out in this category as well. All is not well among the comfortably affluent! But by far the best example is the wickedly funny Mom and Dad.

Writer/director Brian Taylor was half of the Nevaldine/Taylor duo responsible for the Crank movies and the Ghost Rider sequel. Their absurdity showed an unabashed self-awareness, from the writing to the editing, and everything in between. If you didn’t want to see Jason Statham attaching jumper cables to his nipples, you could go watch a Transporter movie. If you didn’t want to see Nicholas Cage peeing fire, you could go watch a Spider-Man movie. These guys were doing action movies on their own terms: bold, energetic, ridiculous, and juvenile. But most of all energetic.

Brian Taylor’s first solo project, as writer and director, is Mom and Dad. It’s a sort of latter day version of The Crazies, but with a subversive subtext about the frustration of parenthood. Before the crazies arrive, Taylor wants you to know he’s here to observe the way each generation falls out of touch with the next. “Would you mind not Facebooking when we’re driving together?” the aggrieved Selma Blair asks her snotty daughter in the car on the way to school. “It’s the only time we have together.”

“Facebooking?” her daughter mutters derisively.

Before you groan when I tell you Nicholas Cage is in this, let me point out that the problem with Nicholas Cage is movies that don’t know how to use him. That’s not an issue with Mom & Dad where his tics and outbursts and random bodyjerks are a perfect fit. What if Nicholas Cage was your dad, his midlife crisis in full bloom? And then what if what happens in Mom & Dad happened? Now we’re talking the stuff of horror movies. To Selma Blair’s credit, she keeps up.

Before Louis CK cemented his legacy as the guy who whipped out his dick, he had a great bit about his kids being assholes. This frank insight into the frustration of parenthood was nearly unique. Who calls their kids assholes? Who does that? Mom & Dad, a keen and energetic jolt of social satire, does that and then some.

Support Qt3 and click here to watch Mom and Dad on Amazon.com.