Mother's Day

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Shot like a middle-of-the-road television movie with dashes of extreme, if unrealistic, violence; this poorly acted, generally tedious production struggles to wring a drop of tension from its intriguing set-up. Obviously influenced by The Last House on the Left, the execution is pedestrian and casting disconcertingly silly. Helmer Bousman, who is best known for being the man behind the first few Saw sequels, doesn't have any gimmicks to fall back on here.

A group of friends are terrorised by a trio of brothers who have just robbed a bank and then headed to where they believed was their mother's (Rebecca De Mornay in The Hand That Rocks The Cradle mode) house. But what was once their home has now been foreclosed on and a trendy new couple with a fractured past have shacked up there. When their aul' one finally turns up, things take a swing for the deranged, as the couple and their pals are taken hostage and tortured.

Casting a bunch of ridiculously attractive people in pretty much every single role is hardly a new occurrence in Hollywood. But generally speaking horror movies that do that are self aware and assembled purely for the fun factor. Mother's Day wants to be a visceral, grimy and tense character driven thriller that keeps the viewer on the edge of their seat, but the film doesn't give you one character worth caring about. The only decent performance comes courtesy of Shawn Ashmore, and he's rarely on screen - in fairness, the inane script doesn't exactly give the main players room to shine. There are too many characters acting in too inexplicable a way for anyone to come off well.

A lack of atmosphere doesn't really help either; Bousman has little in the way of style as a director so anything resembling an edgy or foreboding scene comes purely from the bursts of violence. Stranger moments courtesy of a showboating De Mornay are just that, strange and the film frustratingly suits itself when shifting tone, without actually building towards anything worthwhile.

Immensely unlikeable characters coupled with stagnant direction and soap opera acting all render Mother's Day a complete miss-fire. The ending is so brain-numbingly nonsensical you will want to ask for your money back.