Movie Review: Mother's Day (2010)

Director: Darren Lynn Bousman
Writers: Scott Milam, based on the 1980 screenplay Mother's Day by Charles Kaufman and Warren Leight
Notable Cast: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Briana Evigan, Shawn Ashmore, Frank Grillo, Deborah Ann Woll (TV's True Blood), Kandyse McClure (TV's Battlestar Gallactica), with cameos from A.J. Cook and Alexa Vega

Six degrees of A Nightmare on Elm Street: This film features Jaime King, who was in White Chicks with Lochlyn Munro, who played Deputy Stubbs in Freddy vs Jason.

Mother's Day, from Darren Lynn Bousman, director of Saw II-IV, and based on a low-budget 1980 offering from Troma Films, was originally scheduled for a theatrical release in early 2010.  Unfortunately for the filmmakers, the release date was pushed back several times before the film was dumped on a few screens in 2012 and subsequently released on video.  Personally, I'd been hearing about the film for years and was eager to see it for its impressive line-up of horror actresses.  Jaime King is a swell final girl, Deborah Ann Woll is brilliant on True Blood (or was, at least, in the few seasons I saw), and who doesn't enjoy seeing Rebecca De Mornay be evil? 

The basic premise: Jaime King's character and her husband, played by Frank Grillo (who seems to be aging in reverse - the actor is almost 50, but looks like he's in his late 20's), buy a house and invite a small group of friends over.  Unbeknownst to them, this house belonged to "Mother" (Rebecca De Mornay, who still looks stunning) and her attractive but demented offsping, who return to claim what is rightfully theirs.  Mother believes that there is money hidden in the house that belongs to her family, and no one will get out alive until the loot has been recovered.  

So, is it any good?  To be honest, this kind of movie makes me a bit uncomfortable.  I don't know if the subgenre has a name, but there are certain reality-grounded horror films where a group of unsuspecting nice-ish people get held up at gunpoint by baddies, harassed and tortured for awhile, before finally, the villains get their brutal comeuppance.  Some examples off the top of my head are parts of The Devil's Rejects, Last House on the Left, and, to some extent, I Spit on Your Grave (although that movie has a singular victim).  We watch our "heroes" go through hell for most of the film, wondering how much physical and psychological abuse they can take.

All of it leads up to the payoff, when we see the protagonist(s) get their brutal revenge, giving us an excuse to cheer for and enjoy the intense gore. The film spends its first two thirds showing us how awful these people are (and, in this film, at least, they really are that awful) so that we can enjoy their eventual torture, torment, and destruction.

And to be honest, I'm not above it.  The final act of the film is a bloody good time, watching the cat-and-mouse game between the villains and the surviving cast.  It's the preceding hour of undeserving people being tortured and killed that disturbs me.  Do we really need to see two friends brutally attack each other in a fight where the loser's girlfriend will be raped?  It is hard to enjoy, and if someone had walked into the room while I had been watching some of the early segments, I would have had a difficult time justifying my viewing choice.  Sure, most horror movies feature undeserving people getting killed, but we generally don't watch periods of extended suffering as the victims are robbed of their basic human dignity.

That being said, it is a well-made and well-acted film.  Rebecca De Mornay is fantastic as the mother; sweet one moment, and vicious the next.   Briana Evigan was swell as the slutty tough girl (a favorite horror movie archetype of mine), and Shawn Ashmore and Deborah Ann Woll turn in sympathetic performances. I also appreciated the cameo from A.J. Cook (who also seems to be aging in reverse - until I saw the end credits, I thought it was just some 20 year-old who looked kind of like her), but it is a short scene that is uncomfortable to watch.

I'll give it this: the film is never boring and will keep you on the edge of your seat.  Just not always in a good way. 

Movie Review: Dark House (2009)

Director: Darin Scott
Writers: Darrin Scott, Kerry Douglas Dye
Notable Cast: Jeffrey Combs

Six degrees of A Nightmare on Elm Street: This film features Jeffrey Combs, who was in The Attic Expeditions with Andras Jones, who played Rick in A Nightmare on Elm Street 4.

Okay, it took  me a month, but I'm finally writing my first non-introductory blog post!

Dark House was one of the eight films released under the "Fangoria Frightfest" label in 2010, and had the honor of being the only of those films to get a token theatrical release.  I wasn't expecting much from the set-up - a dead teenager body count movie in a haunted house - but this film actually delivers on its premise rather well.

The story begins "14 years ago," when a religious woman stabbed to death seven foster children in her care, before dispatching herself in one of the more gruesome ways imaginable.  Jump to the present day, where Claire (Meghan Ory), a girl who witnessed the events of the massacre, has grown up into an attractive theater student who has repressed the memories of that day.  When a haunted attraction promoter (Jeffrey Combs) decides to convert the site of the massacre into a haunted house, he highers Claire and five of her classmates to be his actors for opening night.  Claire agrees to participate, hoping it will help her remember and recover from the events of her past.

While not very big, the haunted house is chock full of sophisticated holograms featuring mad scientists, axe-wielding maniacs, and medieval torturers, among other things.  The technical sophistication of the holograms involves some MAJOR suspension of disbelief, but it would be a pretty cool attraction if it actually existed.  When Jeffrey Combs (being his Jeffrey Combsiest) hires Claire and her five friends at $300 a pop, my first thought was, "How would a haunted house make enough in one night to cover $1,800 in actor fees?"  But if such realistic and effective holograms actually existed, I'll be damned if he couldn't charge an insanely high ticket price for admittance. 

But I digress.  Anyway, things go horribly wrong, illusions come alive, people die, and the ghosts of Claire's past return to haunt her.  You get the gist...

While the characters are paper thin - each one has one personality trait that every line of their dialogue reflects (goth girl!  geek!  lesbian!) - and we never get the impression that any of them really like each other that much, they are at least differentiated enough that we know who's who, and it's easy to keep track of their declining numbers.  The writer/director makes a valiant effort to give us gory, creative deaths, and succeeds more often than not, making effective use of the location and scenario.  He also manages to work in a large number of potential victim characters - we have six actors, three other employees at the haunted house, and two reporters.   So thank you, Darin Scott, for giving us a body count movie with lots of bodies to count!

There's even an interesting reveal regarding Claire's memories from 14 years ago, and I have to say I found those scenes a little chilling.  The rest of the film wasn't terribly frightening, but it moved along at a good pace and did its best to be consistently inventive and entertaining.  

I've only seen one other Fangoria Frightfest film - The Tomb - and this one was far and away a better film.  It won't go down as a horror classic, but worth a look if you like the subgenre of horror films.