Review: MOTHER'S DAY Is A Silly Saw-Inspired Horror Remake

rating: 1.5

Darren Lynn Bousman probably has a lot to answer for - first he starts off Saw's inglorious demise by making the ever-decreasing sequels II, III, and IV, and then he pretends he's come out of the woods by making the genius Repo! A Genetic Opera, before throwing a curve-ball in the shape of this Rebecca De Mornay starring remake of the Troma horror Mother's Day. It's difficult to know where to stand here: on the one hand it's a horror remake, so the laws of precedence suggests an aversion to quality from the get-go, but on the other, the original isn't exactly well-known and it star the still-delicious De Mornay as a murderous matriarch of a criminal family. Like Tony Soprano with tits. Sorry, bigger tits. The film opens (after a silly little diversion that will become important much later on) on a party, with a group of nine normal suburban types having good old American fun and casting sexually furtive looks at one another, before they are rudely interrupted by a gang of bank-robbers - one shot - who used to live in the same house, and believed their mother still did. They take the party-goers hostage, call their equally criminal mother, and try to find out where the money they had been sending to the address for mother dearest could possibly have gone. Throw in some torture, a little bit of gore, and that's about that. Advertised somewhat ominously as directed by "Saw sequel helmer Bousman", Mother's Day is an insanity-tinged home invasion horror, with gore-porn aspirations and the tangible B-Movie credentials of having one Rebecca De Mornay as the cherry on an otherwise largely uninspiring cast pile. But that's the thing about these modern so-called horrors: no-one is actually likeable or engaging on a human level, and while that does mess with the audience's expectations for who will survive and who will bite the big one, it doesn't exactly lend itself to an absorbing film experience. Not only is the characterisation a huge problem here, there are also plainly too many of the vapid, and inconsequential characters on-screen. Each is given some semblance of a back-story, or at least something to do to make us care that their faces are in front of us, but it seems like too little effort spread way too thinly, and it's not possible to feel anything but mild apathy towards them. The villains are handled a little differently: because they are the most "colourful" characters they naturally draw attention away from their victims, and it feels (much like in the Saw franchise) like we are supposed to be rooting for this malicious little family. We're certainly supposed to admire De Mornay's mother at the very least, as the camera loves her and there is an obvious attempt to celebrate and exploit her iconic status among cult-fans to give the film some kind of added authenticity. The comparisons with Saw are extremely difficult to resist: and realistically, it is most appropriate to consider the film as a far better, far more affecting 80s horror film pulled through the Saw filter, the same way we are seeing older stories like Red Riding Hood and Beauty and the Beast manipulated through the Twilight filter. And the most explicit Saw comparison? The film's message - its moral centre as it were - is an intrigued portrait of man's capacity for evil, and what we will do to survive in the most adverse conditions. So that's life or death decisions basically: quandries at a cost, same as in Saw, and the proximity of those films' messages and this one is just too close for comfort. That closeness might ensure an audience of sorts, but it's also very restrictive, and aspiring to recapture the spirit of a franchise so mostly-terrible as Saw is hardly a lofty benchmark to aim for. More than anything, the filtering process is no more than one aspect of the film's wider story, because at every turn we are met with creative decision that take the simple route. Everything feels like its been reined in slightly, and though there is a touch of black comedy about proceedings, the film would have worked far better if Bousman had rechanneled the spirt of Repo! and camped everything up a notch. De Mornay's performance would certainly have been even better if she had lost herself completely in the crazy of her character. Overall the film isn't really nasty enough to work completely: yes, De Mornay is convincingly chilling and her sons have their moments when they don't seem to be reading out of the Dummies Guide to Acting Slightly Psychotic In A Hostage Situation cliche manual, but because of modern horror legacies like that of the Saw franchise, film-makers rather erroneously believe that discomfort in scenes is the same as sensational effect. It isn't, and held up next to the superior, but largely unseen original 80s film, this remake lacks any pure sense of horror and anything like the required teeth to turn the reasonable concept into something tangibly chilling. And worse, the few reasonable affecting moments, inevitably captured by that typically Saw-esque fetishised voyeurism, are either cliched or too throw-away. 112 minutes is a long old time for any horror film, especially one trapped in such a small environment, and one that tries to recapture some of the off-putting sensations of Saw - an attempt in which brevity would surely have meant an advantageous lack of scrutiny. Mother's Day is out now.