Rebecca DeMornay is back, she's got a gun, and she is pissed....
Anchor Bay / 112 Minutes / 2010 / Rated R / Street Date: May 8, 2012
The front cover of this Blu-ray edition features a clearly Photoshopped picture of Rebecca DeMornay and the statement "From the director of Saw 2, 3, and 4 right next to it, so if anything can be said about Mother's Day as a high-definition viewing experience, this disc delivers what it promises. Bringing Rebecca back to her Hand that Rocks the Cradle majesty, this piece of cheeky torture porn is a minefield of riches for the horror set, a remake that both goes out of its way to gross you out and hearkens back to an earlier age when other filmmakers were trying to gross you out.
It must be mentioned, though, that Mother's Day could have been grosser and more graphic than it is, and the fact that director Darren Lynn Bousman pulls back a bit actually lets the movie's schlocky sentiments breathe a bit. Of course, bad things happen in this picture, and there is violence and mania around every character turn, but as a dipshit horror flick, this writer actually found Mother's Day to be intermittently appealing in a strange way. If you gave Michael Haneke a partial lobotomy and had him make a low-budget horror movie, it would look a lot like this one.
The movie plays out almost like a chamber piece in that once its plot gets established, it takes place almost exclusively in one place. We begin with a bank heist gone horrifically wrong - three brothers (one possibly fatally wounded) are on the run from the law, and the only safe house they can think to drop in on it their old family home. There's a snag, though: mom (DeMornay) didn't let her kin know that she lost the house in a foreclosure, so when our trio of robbers show up, not only do they meet the new tenants of the place, but they crash their housewarming party.
Mom gets called, the crazy gets unleashed, unsuspecting folk get held hostage - Mother's Day quickly becomes an almost Reservoir Dogs-ish home invasion tale, and once mama comes home to roost, things actually get pretty fun. DeMornay has been underutilized for decades now, and even if her leading role here often veers into emotive, scenery-chewing melodrama, she brings a certain ferocity to her presence on screen that forgives her character's dumber attributes. Mother's Day is not a keeper, nor is it really all that interesting of a grade-Z horror movie, but I found myself frequently giggling at it (with it?). It's difficult to defend the movie with all its rough edges, but I must admit that as bad as it is, I kinda enjoyed it....
