Kritiken

In this image, Pop Art meets patriotism, whimsy, family affection, and national tradition. Its wit, poise, reflection, and irony surpass such junk as Crazy Rich Asians and Get Out, making Mom and Dad the most American of American movies this year.

The film is at once vulgar and sharp, the garish horror-comedy providing a vehicle for Taylor’s thoughts on all that’s ugly in the “normal” American family. . . . The central joke of the film is that the plague only exacerbates violent feelings that parents already feel for their children. Taylor finds enough ways to tell that joke to sustain interest the remaining hour of the film, though readers should be warned that some of these variations can be rather sick.

Taylor revels in the bad taste of his high-concept premise—what if the adrenaline enabling parents to lift cars off their children worked in reverse?—though he wisely leaves some of the gore to the imagination.

Mr. Taylor was half of the directing team, with Mark Neveldine, responsible for some hilariously crass and irrational movies such as “Crank” and “Crank: High Voltage.” I presume that Mr. Neveldine was the funny one of the duo, because absent his input, Mr. Taylor offers up nothing but glitchy editing and bad vibes.

It invests a hoary conceit with disturbing and hilarious lunacy. . . . Doubling down on the horror genre’s propensity for chaos, Taylor eliminates the gradual escalation that characterizes the average thriller. There’s no sense of benevolent normalcy in Mom and Dad, or of a control state that’s to be eventually restored or at least fought for.

The kind of rip-snorting, relatively cheap and cheerful black comedy the industry doesn’t make enough of anymore, Mom & Dad is a deliciously lurid throwback to cult fare like Parents, Heathers, Serial Mom, early Gregg Araki movies and other to-the-bone horror-driven skewerings of suburban pieties.