Mum and Dad

Anchor Bay

R4 DVD

Mum and Dad is a stunning, terrifying and confronting horror tale taking its inspiration from such killers as Ed Gein and the Gloucester serial killers, Fred and Rose West. It offers a cutting edge perspective of horror cinema, while it does include extreme violence, torture and sadism, there is a powerful psychological angle which makes it very different from the current trend in torture horror films.

Lena is a young airport cleaner who has recently emigrated from Poland. She has befriending by Birdie, a young girl at work, who seems to take a lot of interest finding out about her family and friends. Birdie is bubbly and friendly, but something just doesn’t seem quite right. Birdie manipulates events so Lena misses her bus home and then invites her to come and have a meal and meet her parents.

When Lena arrives Birdie and her brother Elbie vanish off into the house and soon she is drugged and chained to a bed. She awakens to the reality of her new life. Mum and Dad are violent psychopaths living as an average working class couple and she is their new daughter. Dad likes to sexually abuse and torture his victims before dismembering them and using their goods as a source of income. Mum likes to cut and torture her children and only protects them from Dad if they fulfil her every whim and fancy. Birdie and Elbie are the “adopted” children of the couple, but many others have not made the grade including one reduced to being a near vegetable, but kept alive in the attic as an occasional plaything for Dad. Dad must be regularly placated and if you try to escape you will pay a very dear price.

The film, as would be expected, is packed with torture, gore and violence but this is not really the most disturbing element, it is the portrayal of dysfunction and madness which really puts you on edge. The violence, however, is extreme, from torture, cutting and sexual abuse, to dismemberment and a Christmas tree that has to be seen to be believed.

As the tale progresses we come to experience the infighting of a truly insane family as they go about their daily chores, albeit of a serial killer type. Some keep and wash the victim’s clothes, Elbie packs the body parts in bubble wrap and buries them and so on. It becomes more and more bizarre and unnerving as the film progresses, until, at last, Lena has a chance to escape.

The psychology of Mum and Dad is what makes the film so disturbing. We have a simple working class couple who are also serial killers. The normal “dysfunction” is writ large, everything becomes disturbed and distorted. Mum needs to be placated and to feel wanted and Dad administers the discipline, but here it is ever so extreme. There is squabbling between the kids, but this time they are vying for their survival in a hierarchy which is based on sex and violence. They taunt and betray each other for affection, but the affection is laced with sex and violence yet loss of it may result in an early demise. Mum and Dad truly believe in the value of the family, but oh what a family it is. This is family values at its most sickening.

The play between madness and intense violence keeps you constantly on the edge of your seat. It is too easy for extreme violence to distance or detach the viewer in a jaded haze of gore, but here the intense horror is balanced with a strong plot, excellent character development and a perverse view of the family which makes it work all too well!

The acting is utterly superb, Mum and Dad (Dido Miles and Perry Benson) are so totally believable that you never doubt for a moment the authenticity of what you are watching.

This is a dark, gruelling and gut wrenching film which will shock and amaze, it is well worth the experience, if you dare.

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This review will appear in Volume 2 No.5 (2009) of the digital and print edition of Synergy Magazine.

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