Zackary Arthur | Through the Shattered Lens

Mom and Dad, which was released earlier this year, is the story of many things.

It’s a story of the suburbs, the perfect place to buy a home and raise your family. Nice lawns, big houses, friendly people, and plenty of buried resentment. It’s a place that can either represent a new beginning or the death of all of your childhood dreams. It all depends on how you look at it. Mom and Dad opens with a suburban mom leaving her newborn in a car that has been strategically parked on the railroad tracks.

Mom and Dad is also the story of a family. The Ryans may seem like they have it all but one only needs to look at their morning routine to see that things aren’t as perfect as they may appear. Teenager daughter Carly (Anne Winters) is dating a guy who she knows her parents dislike. Her younger brother, Josh (Zackary Arthur), is something of a brat. Carly’s father, Brent (Nicolas Cage), is stuck in a monotonous job while her mother, Kendall (Selma Blair), had to give up her career to raise two children who don’t seem to appreciate her at all. On top of all that, the grandparents (one of whom is Lance Henriksen) are coming over later for dinner. The Ryans are a family who spend more time looking at their phones that actually talking to each other.

Mom and Dad is also the story of static. It’s not just the metaphorical static that makes it difficult for the Carly to understand her parents. It’s also a very real static, a hissing and popping noise that suddenly comes over radios, pa systems, and televisions and which, for reasons that are never really made clear, fills parents with rage. When a parent hear the static, they suddenly become obsessed with killing their children. Kendall’s sister attempts to smother her newborn while a group of new fathers gather in the hospital, shaking with rage as they stare at their babies. Elsewhere, parents gather outside the high school, waiting for their kids to get out of school so that they can kill them.

As for Carly and Josh, they find themselves locked in their basement while, outside, Brent and Kendall plot their demise. What makes all of this particularly disturbing (and, at times, darkly humorous) is that it’s not like the parents turn into glass-eyed zombies. Instead, their personalities remain largely the same, except for the fact that they’re now obsessed with killing their children. When Brent and Kendall discuss wanting to murder their children, they speak about everyday frustrations. Brent wants to murder Carly because he caught her hanging out with her boyfriend. Kendall wants to kill her son and her daughter because she feels like she’s had to give up her entire life just to be their mother. The static didn’t drive Mom and Dad crazy. Instead, it just really reminded them that sometimes, children can be a real pain in the ass to deal with.

When it was initially released, the film got a lot of attention for a scene in which an enraged Brent sledgehammers a pool table while singing The Hokey Pokey and yes, it is a classic Nicolas Cage scene. That Cage goes totally and gloriously over-the-top as Brent shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone. (For the record, I always enjoy a good Nicolas Cage freakout.) Even better though is Selma Blair, who is as subtle as Cage is wild. When Kendall talks about everything that she’s sacrificed to be a stay-at-home mom, it’s a poignant moment. She may be trying to kill her children but you still feel for her. Cage is, as usual, entertainingly bizarre but Blair actually gives the film some unexpected depth.

It’s a wild and deeply subversive film and definitely not for everyone. It also features a wonderful third act twist and one of my favorite endings of the year. Mom and Dad has its flaws but, for those who like a little satire with their horror, it’s definitely worth seeing.

The 5th Wave, which came out in January of this year (and that really should be all you need to hear), is the epitome of a “Who cares?” type of film.

It’s another YA adaptation, taking place in a dystopian future and featuring way too many characters for its own good. Aliens have invaded the Earth and they’ve attacked in 4 waves. There was the 1st wave, which destroyed all of the electricity. There was the 2nd wave which involved a lot of earthquakes and natural disasters. I imagine California fell off the mainland during the 2nd wave. The 3rd wave involved bird flu. The 3rd wave is important because it killed the mother of our protagonist, teenager Cassie Sullivan (Chloe Grace Moretz). You can’t be a YA protagonist unless you have at least one dead parents. That’s the rules of the genre.

The 5th Wave deals with the … well, the fifth wave. As far as I can tell, the 5th Wave involves turning every human left into a stock character from a YA dystopian novel. Basically, if you’ve sat through Divergent or The Maze Runner or The Giver or countless other YA adaptations, you already know who everyone is in The 5th Wave. Cassie is our heroine, which means that she spends a lot of time wandering around in the forest, killing potential threats, and thinking about how different things were back in high school.

And that’s really all she does.

See, The 5th Wave last nearly two hours and not a damn thing happens in the entire film. That’s because the 5th Wave is all about setting up a sequel. We meet a lot of characters. We get a lot of backstory. Imagine if The Walking Dead did a half-season with 6 shows straight of people talking about doing things but never actually doing any of it. (Oh, wait, they did just do that…) That’s pretty much what sitting through The 5th Wave was like. We learn that there are aliens disguised as humans. We learns that what’s left of the government cannot be trusted and I was totally happy with that plot development because seriously, the government sucks. As we watch Moretz, Ron Livington, Liev Schriber, and Maria Bello struggle to make some of the most cliched dialogue ever sound compelling, we learn that being a talented actor doesn’t mean that you always get to appear in interesting films.

Things drag on and then they end. Why do they end? Because that’s the way YA adaptations works. Nothing can be resolved in just one movie. Instead, everything’s about setting things up for the next installment. At the very least, all YA films have to be a part of a trilogy. And the third part of the trilogy always requires at least two parts to tell the entire story. That’s just the way things works.

And really, I thought that Divergent was the most soulless YA adaptation that I had ever seen. But the 5th Wave makes a strong case that perhaps it deserves the title.

I guess we could wait to see what happens when part two comes out but seriously, who cares?