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Mother's Day (Blu-ray)
Blu-ray B - United Kingdom - Studio Canal Review written by and copyright: Jon Meakin (2nd November 2011). |
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The Film
 Mother’s Day is basically another family-under-siege story, in the tradition of Panic Room or Hostage and if it had chosen to stick to the middle-ground like those films, maybe it would be more enjoyable. There is no denying that it is an effective thriller through to the end, but the early promise gives way to a messy second half that you have to disengage with to not get infuriated. If you invest in the characters, your commitment is cruelly rewarded with the film equivalent of a kick in the balls. It certainly isn’t all bad though. The story proper starts with three brothers on the run from a robbery. One has been seriously wounded. Meanwhile a couple and their friends are gathering for a party, while news channels warn of a storm. Little do they know that the three men are racing to their house, because it’s where they think their beloved mother still lives. They quickly take the group of friends’ hostage. One’s a doctor so he is forced to tend to the wounded younger brother, while the others suffer the volatile and unpredictable violence of the other two. Meanwhile, they call Mother… So far, so predictable, but it’s harmless stuff and entertaining enough. But when Rebecca De Mornay makes her entrance as the matriarch, it finds a new gear. De Mornay has never exactly set the world on fire since her star-making role in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle, but here she excels. Natalie Koffin, the boys “momma” is a fantastic character. When she arrives, she takes control and even sets the hostage’s minds at rest. For a while. Despite her icy calm exterior, she is unhinged and manipulative. The film is brilliant while ever she is simply talking and playing with emotions. She becomes gradually more dangerous, especially when she discovers that the couple might have been receiving parcels of money from the boys who didn’t know Mother had been forced out of her home. As you might expect, the prisoners come to different ideas about how to handle the situation and the thought that one of them might be hiding a bundle of cash adds an interesting dynamic of distrust, but as the film continues, it loses focus. It becomes obvious that the group are simply stereotypes and different shaped torture fodder. It’s made worse with some horribly contrived plot points that seem to be done just for the sake of making the viewer squirm. What was a basic, reliable thriller with an awesome villain is nothing more than torture porn. I shouldn’t be surprised considering that director Darren Lynn Bousman is responsible for several of the Saw sequels, but the first half was so promising I was hoping he was taking the opportunity to show he could keep control of a plot without recourse to pointless violence. Maybe I’m being unfair. I keep thinking of one scene where Ike (Patrick Flueger) is escorting Beth (Jaime King) to get money from an ATM. They are disturbed by two young girls, who Ike gives a choice to: fight to the death, with the winner allowed to live, with a knife he throws in front of them, or he kills both. I hated the scene. It’s clunky and out of character for the cold calculating Ike unless it’s an weird way of creating an alibi for murder, but it is at least an attempt to say something about human nature and what we would do to survive. This theme is extended throughout the hostages. But even if you can see more value in these scenes than I could, there is no escaping that it goes way out of control in the final act at least. Early setups are ignored, they play out without irony and the story loses structure, forgetting to treat characters as individuals and wasting them in ever more turgid nonsense. Even the storm doesn’t amount to anything! That idea worked really well in Lakeview Terrace, the psychological thriller with Samuel L Jackson, but if Bousman’s history is anything to go by, he is incapable of understanding narrative, even if his films pacing and editing is effective. Even the underlying theme of motherhood that extends in several directions becomes a pointless mess of empty platitudes while one of the most interesting characters, the younger sister Lydia (Deborah Ann Woll) who comes to realise she has been brought up in fear, is wasted by her story simply coming to nothing. Again, it’s just the viewer being manipulated by a short-sighted production, right up to a pathetic, illogical epilogue. Watch the film for a detached sense of entertainment and you’ll enjoy it. Look for anything meaningful or substantial and you will be sorely disappointed. Like me.
Video
The Blu-Ray presentation of Mother’s Day is in 2.35:1 (AVC MPEG-4) and is excellent quality. However, photography is fairly bland, at least until the big finale.
Audio
Again, absolutely nothing special, but the soundtrack is of good quality. There are choices between English DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and English LPCM 2.0 Stereo, with selectable English subtitles.
Extras
Cast & Crew Interviews (with Play All option): - Rebecca De Mornay (9:16) - Jaime King (5:13) - Patrick Flueger (3:44) - Warren Kole (6:27) - Briana Evigan (3:08) - Matt O'Leary (4:23) - Shawn Ashmore (3:42) - Lyriq Bent (7:39) - Richard Saperstein (2:11) - Lloyd Kaufman & Charles Kaufman (7:52) - Bobby King (3:31) B-Roll (11:11) Trailer (1:42) Start up trailers for "Attack the Block", "Kill List", "Twix" and "Cell 211" There is a substantial collection of interviews (almost an hour), but they are not hugely insightful. There are also 11 pointless minutes of B-Roll footage plus a few trailers.
Overall
Mother’s Day is a loose remake of a 1980 exploitation film. How close it is, I can’t comment, but the exploitation genre had more of a point back then. This torture porn just leaves a bad taste in the mouth, especially when the characters are rather flat and insubstantial. Switch your brain off it works as basic entertainment while it wins extra points for a superb central performance from Rebecca De Mornay.
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