It’s not my fault you don’t have a life. A mass hysteria of unknown origins causes parents to turn violently on their own children. Carly (Anne Winters) is a selfish teen and her young brother Joshua (Zachary Arthur) is obsessed with superheroes. They are the children of permanently disappointed Brent (Nicolas Cage) and Kendall (Selma Blair) whose dreams of a good life are hanging on a thread of yoga and a pool table. At school a TV signal seems to rewire the teachers’ brains and the students are in danger. Meanwhile Kendall attends the birthing room at the local hospital where her sister is having a baby but she tries to kill it when the machines go down. Kendall races home where Brent is losing it and the children are taking refuge in the basement … It’s like they’re waiting for a buffet. A funny take on parenting during a mass midlife crisis in the ‘burbs, this nods to Poltergeist in the TV white noise that seems to trigger violence in all the moms and dads. There’s also a reference to Night of the Living Dead as Carly’s cool boyfriend Damon (Robert T. Cunningham) happens to be the African-American who rocks up on time to help when things get seriously violent. Curiously the action sequences are not particularly well tooled but things get more amusing when grandpa (Lance Henriksen) arrives to let his son know how much he cares for him. Blair is great as the cool mom who protects her sister’s newborn one moment and tries to gas her own kids the next. Cage (naturally) relishes the role of the man bemoaning his cottage cheese ass, reminiscing over a teenage car crash when his topless girlfriend gave him a lap dance. Doesn’t quite hit all the notes needed for cult classic status but the titles are fabulous in a Seventies-trash homage sorta fashion with Dusty Springfield’s Yesterday When I Was Young giving us absolutely no idea of what’s about to unfold: an ode to power saws. Written and directed by Brian (Crank) Taylor. I used to think my parents’ divorce was the worst tragedy of my life but ironically that just doubled my chances of survival!
mondomovies 