[Movie Review] MUM & DAD
Mum & Dad is the latest film, following on from the Tilda Swinton movie Julia, to be granted an experimental “Day and Date” release here in the UK – meaning it’s available at the cinema, on DVD, online and in various forms of video-on-demand all on the same day. When those wanting me to see the movie first got in touch, it was an open form for me to choose how I saw it. I liked that. I could drag my arse along the road to the cinema. I could drag my arse along to the post office HQ to pick up the screener as my postie seems to have an aversion to “parcels” or I could click a couple of buttons on my Sky+ remote and have it there and then, up on screen, with a credit provided back to me at a later date. I opted for the latter.
Now, with the film itself, I’m stuck once again between a rock and a hard place because its one of those films in which I’m not only torn in how I review it, but also I’m very conscious of the fact that I am tied by the rating system here on the site. The most difficult films for me to review are usually those horror films of the ‘gore-nography’ ilk where I find great direction, solid performances and worthy production values caught up in a film that I just didn’t like both morally and as entertainment. Do I rate the film based on the fact that I didn’t like it? Or do I base my judgement off of the positive qualities, knowing that many out there will like it and simply need to know whether this is more Saw or Saw V?
This particular “rub” exists in the case of Stephen Shiel’s Mum and Dad.
The film tells of Mum (Dido Miles), Dad (Perry Beson) and their “adopted” children, Birdie (Ainslie Howard) and Elbie (Toby Alexander), who live in one of the many [real-life] nigh on unbearable housing estates situated under the flightpath at Heathrow Aiport, where Dad and children also work. The family live off whatever they scavenge from cargo holds, offices and hotels – including a steady stream of transient workers who populate the airport. When Lena (Olga Fedori), a young Polish office cleaner, is befriended by Birdie, she gets drawn into a nightmarish world of torture, murder and perversity. Imprisoned in a suburban House of Horrors and designated a “Mummy’s Girl”, Lena’s only options appear to be to become part of the family – and join them in their insanity – or die.
Mum & Dad is a relatively low-budget piece of horror fodder that happens to be directed keenly by writer/director Steven Shiel. The man clearly has some talent and I’d be interested to see where his career goes and what he manages to pull together with a comfortable budget and a different genre. As a writer though I’m less complimentary of him because from the start through to the end it always feels as if Shiel is shooting his script treatment and not an actual completed, detailed screenplay. However, he’s assisted by two genuinely commendable performances by Dido Miles and Perry Benson (a regular in the movies of Shane Meadows) in the title roles who do some great, disturbingly natural work with characters that clearly aren’t there on the page. Benson, in particular come the movie’s climax, does his best to never play the absurdities as anything less then totally real and the film benefits as a result.
The thing is though that, at its core, Mum & Dad is just another bit of cinematic torture-porn. British reviews are desperately trying to suggest that it is “much, much more” but it really isn’t – there’s no subvertive allegory regarding immigration or the working class family. There’s really nothing more then what is there on the screen; and what IS there on the screen is a check-list of been there, seen it, didn’t like it cliches from every other movie that has got a hold of a young female, tied her up, brutally and savagely tortured her for “our entertainment” and then had her get free so she can go on a ‘rampage of revenge’… And yes, that includes the ‘secret’ hiding up in the family loft!
It’s not a bad film – certainly not in terms of its direction and acting – but it is a stale one. Maybe you die hard fans of all this gorenography stuff will disagree with me and lap this up, but the fact is I’m utterly bored with these types of film now so when I do have to indulge in them I want them to offer me something fresh and I want them to show me that the story is not built on the foundations of gore-for-gores sake, like Jessie J Kirby’s Insatiable which is an admittedly rough-around-the-edges, flawed genre attempt but it is the infinitely superior film.
And if you’re going to go down the route of making the gore and torture absolutely imperative to your film, then you need to make sure that it is strongly written as well as superbly acted and directed, so that it moves like a bullet and never gives the audience a single second to breath, whilst offering up a fresh and disturbing take on the subgenre. Like James Watkins’ Eden Lake which is one of the best genre entries this year and definitely the film you should seek out if you’re wanting a bit of this sort of stuff.
Mum & Dad is scrappy and commendable in some regards but will offer you absolutely nothing the majority of viewers aren’t already immensely bored and indifferent towards.
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