MOTHER'S DAY (2010) movie review

Mother's Day (2010) (1st viewing) d. Bousman, Darren Lynn

In this day and age of title reappropriation, it consistently confounds me as to why someone would go through the trouble of acquiring the rights to “remake” a lesser-known film when the final product bears only the slightest resemblance to its source material. Such is the case with Saw II, III, IV and Repo! The Genetic Opera director Bousman’s latest, a gleefully nasty home invasion movie that resides miles away from Charles Kaufman’s early Troma black comic rape/revenge flick.

Rebecca de Mornay earns her matriarchal top billing status, lording over a brood of amoral offspring who wage an assault on the new owners (Jaime King, Frank Grillo) of their recently repossessed domicile. As one might expect from Bousman’s pedigree, there is no shortage of squishy, squirmy gore moments, though they are handled in an intriguingly offhand way, at times relegated to the background or edge of frame.

The impressive body-count-to-be performances are all capable enough, though character motivations are sketchy as they attempt to serve screenwriter Scott Milam’s dicey high wire between gritty realistic set-pieces and outlandish thriller scenarios. The end result is a relatively entertaining but decidedly mixed breed.