It's about time that Hollywood remade a horror flicked that kinda sucked and could actually benefit from a re-telling.
The original mother's day was a Troma Film about a creepy old mom and her two sons who end up raping and terrorizing some dumb, unsuspecting girls in the woods. I say that because in the 70's/80's, most female victims in these films were just morons, which really was the point of it all. Many love the old Troma craziness of decades gone by, us included, but let's be honest, most Troma flicks were more camp than quality, and while that was an awesome thing, remaking some of that schlock isn't the worst idea we've heard.
The remake approaches things from a different angle, and actually has more than the average rape-revenge story going on for it. On the run from the police, a family of criminals return to their family home to hole up and plan their big getaway. If course the new residents are having a party when they arrive, and everything goes to hell. Gun violence, knife violence, pool ball violence... the hell is definitely a gory and wet one.
Rebecca De Mornay plays crazy really well, and she's great here as the schizo mother who uses her kids to satisfy her sadistic whims. There's actually some depth to her performance, which was a nice change of pace for this type of movie; she wasn't all crazy. There was a tender and loving side to her too. She even had an odd code that she lived by, and as long as you followed her code, you might not have to die painfully.
That's the nature of the beast though, isn't it? No one really uses their brains in these flicks, and if they did, they'd be pretty boring to sit through. Mother's Day wasn't boring. In fact, it was pretty tension filled and bloody, and managed to keep us at full attention for the entire running time. The hot chicks helped things along too, although not much of the movie was very sexy. Unless you find disturbing things sexy, then it was. Creep.
The supporting cast was pretty solid as well, with some of them even turning in great performances. Chief among the "greats" was Patrick John Flueger as murderous brother Ike Koffin. He's not pure evil, and he makes us actually feel for him at certain points, despite his nasty actions. Warren Cole and Deborah Ann Woll were equally as compelling as the other Koffin kids, and it was great to watch them all do their thing. Jamie King, as ever, played the harrowed heroine to a T.
It was also great to see AJ Cook and Alexa Vega show up in very small, but entertaining supporting roles.
We were not fans of Darren Lynn Bousman's Repo: The Genetic Opera, and his Saw sequels were what they were, which really didn't do much for us either way. Here though, Bousman gives us a smart and edgy glimpse into the fabric of a deranged family, and he pulls it off very well. He has a feel for this kind of stuff, and in our humble opinion, this might be his best work to date. More like this please, Darren.
B+ Mother's Day is not only a great remake of a campy 80's cult classic, but it's a solid, well made horror film capable of standing on its own. It delivers the goods not only viscerally, but thematically as well, and manages to be entertaining and exciting throughout. It could have lost an extra character or two, as keeping track of so many and their "stories" was a bit jarring, but that's a minor complaint. If you like a good old fashioned home invasion flick, then pick up a copy of this one asap.
