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Review: ‘Mom And Dad’ is A Darkly Hysterical Battle of The Generations

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Every generation has its gripes about the next. Be it rock ‘n roll, avocado toast, or disrespectful attitudes, parents tend to look down upon their progeny. Lately it’s resulted in thinkpieces, but what if things escalated? Mom And Dad shows us a grotesque and hysterical battle between youth and elders unlike anything before.

The story follows the Ryan family, a typical American suburban family. Determined father, Brent (Nicolas Cage). Compassionate mother, Kendall (Selma Blair). Rebellious older daughter, Carly (Anne Winters) and naive younger son Josh (Zackary Arthur). It seems to be another usual day for this usual family… until the parents show up to see their kids at school unexpectedly. Brent becomes more and more short tempered and bitter. Kendall becomes more vindictive. Suddenly, generational warfare becomes deadly and Carly and Josh must survive the day as their Mom and Dad return home with sinister intent.

While horror stories of a virus or phenomena causing people to go crazy is nothing new to the genre, the mechanics of this particular instance makes it unique and entertaining. For one, the affected parents are only violent toward their offspring or anyone preventing them from slaughtering their young. The second and most important symptom being that the infected parents keep their personalities despite being filicidal maniacs, they still act the same as they normally would. Brent and Carly retaining their quirks and dialogue being indistinguishable from before. A creative trait that makes the conflict all the more interesting to watch rather than them just being berserkers.

The performances are outstanding all around as the family goes from getting on each other’s nerves to trying to take each other’s lives. Nicolas Cage gives a stunner of a show as the family patriarch turned psychopath. While many have seen one of the highlights with the ‘hokey-pokey’ sledgehammer bit in the trailer, that’s just the tip of the iceberg. The rest of the cast are just as impacting, with Selma Blair’s character showing the ups and downs of motherhood and her descent into the madness. While the kids are energetic and stand out on their own, working together to survive their killer parents in surprisingly creative an unexpected ways.

The pacing is rather interesting, and perhaps a bit more rooted in writer/director Brian Taylor’s action movie roots. Amidst the action we are shown flashbacks to times the kids annoyed their parents or screwed up, paralleled with times they showed genuine love and affection for each other. Creating a lot of empathy for the characters, even the homicidal parents who’re being pushed by an unknown force. That type of editing may seem a little off, but it really captured the tone and the personalities of the family cast. There are also a lot of interesting cameos that pop up. I won’t say who, but when you do see them, they’ll make your jaw drop.

Overall, Mom And Dad is a darkly comic survival horror film that captures the topical issue of generational conflict between parents and children, and amps it up with an entertaining amount of violence and a kick-ass soundtrack! This is one I would highly recommend, but see it with your parents or children at your own discretion…

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‘Evil Dead’ Film Franchise Getting TWO New Installments

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It was a risk for Fede Alvarez to reboot Sam Raimi’s horror classic The Evil Dead in 2013, but that risk paid off and so did its spiritual sequel Evil Dead Rise in 2023. Now Deadline is reporting that the series is getting, not one, but two fresh entries.

We already knew about the Sébastien Vaniček upcoming film that delves into the Deadite universe and should be a proper sequel to the latest film, but we are broadsided that Francis Galluppi and Ghost House Pictures are doing a one-off project set in Raimi’s universe based off of an idea that Galluppi pitched to Raimi himself. That concept is being kept under wraps.

Evil Dead Rise

“Francis Galluppi is a storyteller who knows when to keep us waiting in simmering tension and when to hit us with explosive violence,” Raimi told Deadline. “He is a director that shows uncommon control in his feature debut.”

That feature is titled The Last Stop In Yuma County which will release theatrically in the United States on May 4. It follows a traveling salesman, “stranded at a rural Arizona rest stop,” and “is thrust into a dire hostage situation by the arrival of two bank robbers with no qualms about using cruelty-or cold, hard steel-to protect their bloodstained fortune.”

Galluppi is an award-winning sci-fi/horror shorts director whose acclaimed works include High Desert Hell and The Gemini Project. You can view the full edit of High Desert Hell and the teaser for Gemini below:

High Desert Hell
The Gemini Project

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‘Invisible Man 2’ Is “Closer Than Its Ever Been” to Happening

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Elisabeth Moss in a very well-thought-out statement said in an interview for Happy Sad Confused that even though there have been some logistical issues for doing Invisible Man 2 there is hope on the horizon.

Podcast host Josh Horowitz asked about the follow-up and if Moss and director Leigh Whannell were any closer to cracking a solution to getting it made. “We are closer than we have ever been to cracking it,” said Moss with a huge grin. You can see her reaction at the 35:52 mark in the below video.

Happy Sad Confused

Whannell is currently in New Zealand filming another monster movie for Universal, Wolf Man, which might be the spark that ignites Universal’s troubled Dark Universe concept which hasn’t gained any momentum since Tom Cruise’s failed attempt at resurrecting The Mummy.

Also, in the podcast video, Moss says she is not in the Wolf Man film so any speculation that it’s a crossover project is left in the air.

Meanwhile, Universal Studios is in the middle of constructing a year-round haunt house in Las Vegas which will showcase some of their classic cinematic monsters. Depending on attendance, this could be the boost the studio needs to get audiences interested in their creature IPs once more and to get more films made based on them.

The Las Vegas project is set to open in 2025, coinciding with their new proper theme park in Orlando called Epic Universe.

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Jake Gyllenhaal’s Thriller ‘Presumed Innocent’ Series Gets Early Release Date

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Jake gyllenhaal presumed innocent

Jake Gyllenhaal’s limited series Presumed Innocent is dropping on AppleTV+ on June 12 instead of June 14 as originally planned. The star, whose Road House reboot has brought mixed reviews on Amazon Prime, is embracing the small screen for the first time since his appearance on Homicide: Life on the Street in 1994.

Jake Gyllenhaal’s in ‘Presumed Innocent’

Presumed Innocent is being produced by David E. Kelley, J.J. Abrams’ Bad Robot, and Warner Bros. It is an adaptation of Scott Turow’s 1990 film in which Harrison Ford plays a lawyer doing double duty as an investigator looking for the murderer of his colleague.

These types of sexy thrillers were popular in the ’90s and usually contained twist endings. Here’s the trailer for the original:

According to Deadline, Presumed Innocent doesn’t stray far from the source material: “…the Presumed Innocent series will explore obsession, sex, politics and the power and limits of love as the accused fights to hold his family and marriage together.”

Up next for Gyllenhaal is the Guy Ritchie action movie titled In the Grey scheduled for release in January 2025.

Presumed Innocent is an eight-episode limited series set to stream on AppleTV+ starting June 12.

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