Review of Mum & Dad (2008) by Keely R — 26 Jul 2009

I have been a big advocate of British (and European) horror movies. Obviously I'm slightly biased but on the whole most will agree that good horrors are coming from this side of the Atlantic at the moment. Mum and Dad is another interesting Brit Horror but this time it falls a little bit short of the standards we have come to expect.

Set around London's Heathrow Airport, centers on a murderous and perverse family who live in a house at the end of the runway right under the roar of the flight path. They live off the contents of supposedly 'lost' luggage, but the 'family business' is much more sinister. Polish worker Lena becomes the latest unwilling house guest when she is brutally forced into their world.

Mum's predilection is torture. Dad's a killer. And the kids gather the victims. Lena is the newest member of 'the family', after they kidnap her from an airport cleaning job. Her choice becomes either to endure and live by their rules or to become as brutal and savage as the family themselves.

Horror films come in all different sizes and flavors. Gore, ghosts, werewolves, suspense, torture and whatnot. Mum & Dad is a little different though. Rather than hit the audience with full-frontal ugliness it gambles on weirdness and plays the freak card. While some might call it another variation on the crazy family theme, it holds more in common with a film like Killers than it does with The Chainsaw Massacre or Zombie flicks.

I really did like the start of this film. The creepiness was high on the scale and the story , although very torture porn in its premise , had a good deal of originality. The big problem I had with Mum and Dad , was Dad himself , or should I say actor Perry Benson.

He's acting can be described as amateurish as best. He sounds like he is reading from a script and he looks well out of place as the lead in a movie. I have seen in before in good films like "This is England" and "Love, Honor and Obey" but in those movies he was given very little in the way of speaking parts . You watch him in this and you know exactly why.

The rest of the cast are pretty good and and they react appropriately with the disgusting things that are going on around them. Some of what happens is sick , Very sick and twenty years ago would not have got past the film censor but now it's seems par for the course to have dismembered genitals and incestuous relationships.

Considering the budget for this film was only £100,000 ($150,000) , writer and director Steven Sheil has done a pretty good job but I did find , as the movie went on , the weirdness factor got higher and higher until the last twenty minutes got too surreal for my liking.

Apparently this is loosely based on British Serial Killers Fred and Rose West and if they got up to half the things Mum and Dad do in this movie then it just goes to prove what a sick world we live in.

To sum up , Mum and Dad is by no means a masterpiece but if you are real horror aficionado then this could be right up your street. Just don't go knocking on Mum and Dads front door !

6 out of 10.