MOTHER'S DAY

Mother's Day (2010) sees Rebecca de Mornay reprise the 'demented and maternal' type of character she famously played in The Hand that Rocks the Cradle around twenty years ago: well, imagine if the monstrous Peyton had her own brood of grown-up children, and imagine too, if you will, that she's foreclosed on a mortgage and lost the family home. Cue an example of 'home invasion' horror which has some definite strengths, but also some unforgivable weaknesses.

The film opens with a woman stealing a newborn from a maternity ward…and then, leaving this part of the plot for the time being, we move to both sets of our main characters - the party of earlythirtysomethings celebrating in the bargain reclaimed house now owned by Beth (Jaime Wood) and husband Daniel (Frank Grillo). Thing is, the Koffin brothers don't know that their mom has lost the house - and they're on their way over there after a bank robbery goes wrong, losing them the cash and seeing youngest brother Johnny shot in the process.

It almost goes without saying that the party gets very ugly very fast, and the partygoers are held hostage. One of the brothers, Ike (Patrick John Flueger) finally contacts their mother to explain the situation. She arrives at the house soon after, with daughter Lydia (True Blood's Deborah Ann Woll). At first, mom is a modicum of good breeding and civility, and assures the new owners that they'll soon be on their way. That is, until she discovers that her sons had been sending her stacks of cash in the post - which she never received. Immediately, her priority becomes to extract that money from Beth and Daniel - and a battle of wills commences, with the prerequisite torture and torment along the way as the Koffin family try to drum up enough money to get south of the border.

One of the first flaws of this film is that is introduces a crowd of characters very quickly and then struggles to make them well defined (or, for that matter, sympathetic). The criminal family are definitely more interesting, although rather tried-and-tested, displaying over familiar characteristics, mannerisms and sayings. This extends to de Mornay who, as the writers attempt to depict her as a strange blend of Betty Crocker and she-wolf, is given a host of 'motherisms' to parrot - 'I don't want you back a second after eight o'clock', 'actions have consequences' and so on. More subtle use of dialogue would have made the same points about characters. De Mornay is pretty good in her role, although I felt that her performances starts strong and dwindles as the tension increases - she eventually communicates her character's rage by over-pronouncing character names and going bug-eyed…something which detracts from the calm menace of her character's earliest scenes. Similarities to The Hand That Rocks the Cradle are hard to overlook, too. A surrogate, infertile woman goes head to head with an initially frail woman who makes good. (I spotted the 'clever twist' in Beth's story by approximately thirty seconds in, I have to say, and I won't spoiler it here, but it's one which routinely makes my blood boil.)

Then, the abundance of horror cliché also works against the film's otherwise decently handled tension. For instance: bad guy lies in the wreck of a car. Policeman approaches to help frail female companion. Bad guy's eyes snap open, and potential redeemer gets killed! The film is rife with this sort of thing - so that, at least in my case, you're less ready to go along with more effective, original scenes. It's a well-made piece of film, the performances are decent throughout, but it feels impossible to go along with it when you feel you know how key scenes will end.

That said, it is satisfying to see Rebecca de Mornay in another sinister role, and the film is pacy enough to carry the audience along without allowing much time to worry about how it's being done. Ultimately, these sorts of 'home invasion' horrors are pretty formulaic, so perhaps I'm being unduly hard on Mother's Day - it just felt like, with a few revisions, this would have been so much better.

Review by Keri O'Shea