Four out of
Five stars
Running time:
84 mins
Entertaining, blackly comic British horror flick that works on a number of levels, thanks to a strong script and superb performances from Benson and Miles.
What's it all about?
Directed by Stephen Sheil, Mum and Dad is set in London and stars Olga Fedori as Lena, a Polish girl who works as a cleaner at Heathrow airport. On her first day, she's befriended by the chatty Birdie (Ainsley Howard) and her seemingly mute brother Elbie (Toby Alexander) and when she misses her last bus home at the end of her shift, they offer to let her spend the night at their parents' house, which is nearby.
However, when Lena arrives at the house (located directly under the Heathrow flight path), she becomes the latest victim of Birdie's psychotic Mum and Dad (Dido Miles and Perry Benson), who chain her to the bed and torture her, while proclaiming her their new daughter. Meanwhile, Birdie becomes jealous of her new "sister" and when Lena discovers another "child" in the attic, she realises that she must find a way to escape before it's too late.
The Good
The script is excellent and works on a number of levels – there are echoes of the Fred and Rose West case but the fact that there's a black humour at work here ensures that this is more than just British torture porn. For example, it's possible to read the entire film as a warning about the dangers of living too close to the airport, while the fabulously grotesque Christmas sequence wouldn't be out of place in an episode of The League of Gentlemen.
The Great
Perry Benson is brilliant as the tabloid-reading, occasionally sentimental Dad, who has a disturbing penchant for masturbating onto raw meat. Similarly, Dido Miles is chillingly good as Mum (in a neat reversal of expectations, it's Mum who does all the sexual torturing), while Olga Fedori makes a surprisingly resilient victim.
Worth seeing?
By turns chilling, squirm-inducing and darkly funny, Mum and Dad is an entertaining, uniquely British horror flick that marks director Stephen Sheil out as a talent to watch.