PopHorror Let's Get Scared
I remember looking through the TV Guide one night when I was in high school and seeing a listing for the movie Mom and thought that it sounded awesome. Unfortunately, we didn’t have cable at the time, so I was unable to see it. Thankfully though, about a year later after we got cable it was on HBO at like three in the morning and my friend Scott and I were able to check it out.
I really dug it when I first saw it and hadn’t thought about it in years until recently when I ran across it for free on YouTube, so my wife and I watched it because she had never seen it.
So, was it as good as I remembered or was it a real stinker? Keep reading to find out…
Synopsis
A man struggles to take care of his elderly mother who has been turned into a flesh-eating monster by one of the boarders that lives in her house.
Patrick Rand directed the film from a screenplay he wrote with Kevin Watson.
While I still dug this movie a lot after watching it again, I also found it to be a lot more depressing than I remember due to personal reasons. My mom is not in the best of health at the moment and my wife, and I are currently taking care of her, so this movie really hit home for me, and I could totally relate to what the main character was going through. No, my mother isn’t a monster like the woman in this film, but it’s a very challenging situation for a number of reasons so I really felt for what the son in the moving was dealing with.
The premise is simple but it works. We have an elderly woman who is bitten by a weird man (who may or may not be a werewolf) renting a room from her that turns her into a monster that enjoys eating people. Her adult son soon finds out what happened to her and must decide what to do with her. He wants to stop her because she is responsible for killing several people, but at the same time she is his mom, and he loves her and wants to take care of her. I may be reading way too much into this movie for personal reasons, but in my head the entire movie is a metaphor for someone taking care of an elderly parent who is suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s.
One of the strongest things about the movie is its cast. Mark Thomas Miller (Ski School, Desert Rats) does an exceptional job as Clay, and as I mentioned I could really relate to him and his entire situation in general. Miller does a fantastic job bringing his character to life, and he is just a likable character that most viewers will care about. Genre mainstay Brion James (Blade Runner, The Fifth Element) is just as awesome as usual as Nestor, the man who causes the whole situation to take place who has a taste for pregnant women (literally).
The star of the movie though, is Jeanne Bates (Mulholland Drive, Dream Lover) who plays the title character. She does such an amazing job and comes off as both scary as Hell at times and completely pitiful and sympathetic at others and she just delivers in general. Overall, the entire cast does a wonderful job and helps make the movie so enjoyable as a result.
I also like the fact that the monster that the mother turns into looks awesome. She looks legit scary and isn’t something that you would want to run into in a dark alley. The effects people did an excellent job creating the monster and she is total and complete nightmare fuel. The monster is quite brutal and enjoys tearing people to pieces before she eats them, but at the same time you can’t help but feel a little sorry for it because it can’t help itself and eats people to survive even though the woman trapped inside of it doesn’t want to hurt anyone, making her a tragic Batman villain type character in my opinion.
As you can tell, I am a fan of Mom, and I thought that it held up pretty darn well. It’s scary, has some nice dark humor and campiness at times, and is totally depressing at the same time. It has one of the saddest endings I’ve ever seen in my life so if you are expecting a happy ending you may want to look elsewhere. If you are in the mood for a good monster movie that also hits you in the feels then I highly recommend this movie. Give it a shot if you can find it as it is worth looking for as I feel that it is an extremely underrated little horror flick that deserves a lot more love than it gets.
Check it out as soon as you can, I promise you that you won’t be disappointed.
