Brian Taylor directs Nicolas Cage, Selma Blair and Anne Winters in this exploitation horror where an epidemic causes parents across the US to slaughter their kids. 

Average horror – the threat while sustained never escalates, the creepy moments never spin off into the unexpected. Like The Purge movies this takes a fetid high concept and explores it glossily but with hints at a wider, more intriguing picture not fully explored. We get unsettling shots of fathers glaring through the glass at a New Born ward’s incubator unit, another dad coldly justifying his murder to news reporters with a shrug and Lance Henriksen showing up briefly as a demented grandpops. In all honesty there’s much to like. Cage, though absent for a lot of the first half, goes full pelt on screen, giving his most satisfying turn since Bad Lieutenant. Blair plays with subtler shades in her acting paintbox and delivers as quite the eye-catching lead. The monsters are made human, while never losing their transgressive fun. The opening credits lovingly sell us a grindhouse extravaganza. It is a bit too reductive in scale and taste to live up to that promise. But its bloody heart is in the right place. If anything Mom and Dad reminds me of VHS treats like They Live or Parents. Movies that never really keep to the word of their batshit promise yet settle in the nostalgia banks happily as ‘a great movie’ for the next couple of decades… classics as long as they don’t have to endure the scrutiny of being rewatched too often. Some movies’ elements are so enticing that their cult legacy is guaranteed, it doesn’t really matter that they don’t fully hit their marks when actually being enjoyed.

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