It’s described as a “jet black comedy,” and that would certainly be an accurate description of the content of the first trailer for Mom And Dad – the latest film from the man who brought you Crank. While Nicolas Cage movies can notoriously vary wildly in quality, hopes are high for this seeming subversion of contagion-in-suburbia thrillers.
For those who might be unfamiliar with the project, it follows teenager Carly Ryan (Anne Winters), who finds herself having to outwit her mother and father – Brent (Nicolas Cage) and Kendall (Selma Blair) – when some kind of mass hysteria descends upon their suburb and makes parents brutally murder their own children. As chaos continues to erupt around them, Carly and her younger brother must survive a relentless onslaught from their enraged forebears.
The trailer itself bodes very well for the film and appears to have writer-director Brian Taylor’s signature energy all over it, as we see Brent and Kendall engage in standard grumbling about self-centred children, before hordes of zombie-like parents descend upon the local school to commit murder and mayhem. The way in which Brent and Kendall switch to homicidal adults also creates an uneasy question as to whether they’re suffering from the same hysteria as others, or whether they’re simply seizing an opportunity when it arises. Either way, the creepiness and violence pauses for a moment when they (and we) recall that Brent’s own parents are coming to visit.
Is the problematic hysteria affecting parents of adults, too, or is Mom And Dad a fun commentary on the sense of entitlement and privilege exhibited by some teenagers today? Perhaps it’s a statement on the idea of the previous generation ruining the world for the next. Whichever idea it ultimately presents, it looks like we’re in for a ton of fun when Mom And Dad tears into theatres on January 19th.