MOTHER'S DAY DVD (2010)

SYNOPSIS: After a bank robbery gone wrong, three brothers head for home hoping their mother can provide them with a getaway. The youngest brother, Johnny has been shot and their back-stabbing former partner has gotten away with all the cash. But when the brothers get home, they find that all their stuff is gone and mother is nowhere to be found: she lost the house months ago in a foreclosure. The new owners, Beth and Daniel Sohapi and their guests gathered for an ill-timed birthday party become the brothers' unwitting hostages. Not long after, mother arrives along with the boys' sister Lydia and it soon becomes clear that mother will do absolutely anything to protect her children. In one terrifying evening, she brilliantly takes control of the situation and mastermind her sons' escape from the law. Sides will be taken, secrets revealed and sins punished as the hostages struggle to make it through the night alive.

MOVIE REVIEW:

Twenty years after ‘The Hand that Rocks the Cradle’, Rebecca De Mornay has gone from nutty nanny to crazed mama of a family of criminal psychos. Indeed, despite her seemingly soft-spoken and gentle nature, De Mornay is the ultimate baddie in this picture, the puppetmaster behind the three Koffin brothers who return to their foreclosed home after a botched bank robbery to hold their new inhabitants hostage. Besides big brother Ike (Patrick Flueger), the middle but most volatile of the lot Addley (Warren Kole), and the heavily injured little brother Johnny (Matt O'Leary), there’s also a timid little sister Lydia (True Blood’s Deborah Ann Woll) to complete the dysfunctional family portrait.

‘Saw  II, III and IV’ helmer Darren Lynn Bousman pits them against Daniel (Frank Grillo) and Beth Sohapi (Jaime King)- whose family name is an ill-conceived running joke in the movie- as well as their seven yuppie guests partying in the basement as an impending tornado rages outside. Mother tells them they mean no harm- as long as they get enough money to engage their transport outta there, they will be gone before the night is over. Unfortunately, things get more complicated when it dawns on Mother that the Sohapi couple have been keeping the money her sons have been sending back to her presumed home address.

Add to that some harried hostages who can’t seem to think straight during stress as well as some others who can’t seem to take the situation lying down, and you have a setup from writer Scott Milam that’s more than enough to occupy the 112-min running time (though the M18 version released on DVD here has been edited). In fact, Milam may have bitten off more than he can chew, populating the movie with so many characters that nary one of them (except De Mornay) has enough screen time for you to know them well- let alone empathise with them when some meet their demise.

Indeed, death seems to be the singular focus for Bousman, the former music video director continuing his bloody spree from ‘Saw’ here. Plenty of blood and some amount of gore means that those among the weak of heart may be much better off celebrating the titular occasion than to watch this- nonetheless, these scenes of gruesome torture don’t have the same effective buildup as those in the ‘Saw’ series, and unless you’re a sadist, you’re probably going to find the viewing experience quite an off-putting one. Bousman also does himself no favours by not rewarding the baddies’ viciousness with an equally ferocious comeuppance (see ‘I Saw The Devil’), never satisfyingly appeasing that sense of injustice his audience would naturally have watching innocent people getting tortured.

In the end, despite a sufficiently twisty story, the only real pleasure in this twist on that venerable occasion is watching De Mornay return to the screen in a significant role. Equal parts tender and terrifying, De Mornay’s well-calibrated performance however deserves a much better treatment than standard torture porn/ home invasion flick that’s frankly becoming just too commonplace in recent years to truly thrill. It’s still a sufficiently exciting home video watch, but for all the agony it places its protagonists in, it lacks a truly gratifying end to leave you on a satisfying high. 

AUDIO/VISUAL:

The Dolby Digital 2.0 doesn’t do much for the atmospherics of the film other than reproducing the dialogues clearly. Picture is presented in 16x9 widescreen, but lacks the standard resolution of a 1080p display, so expect a smaller screen if you’re watching this on your big TV.

MOVIE RATING:

  

DVD RATING :

Review by Gabriel Chong