Mum & Dad (2008)

Director: Steven Sheil

Writer: Steven Sheil

Starring: Perry Benson, Dido Miles, Olga Fedori, Ainsley Howard, Toby Alexander, Micaiah Dring, Mark Devenport, Chris Roebuck

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Parents can be bloody murder.

Plot: Mum and Dad, and their 'adopted' children, Birdie & Elbie, work at the airport. The family live off whatever they scavenge from cargo holds, offices and hotels - including a steady stream of transient workers who populate the airport's soulless hub. When Lena, a young Polish office cleaner, is befriended by Birdie, she gets drawn into a nightmarish world of torture, murder and perversity. Imprisoned in a suburban House of Horrors and designated a 'Mummy's Girl', Lena's only options appear to be to become part of the family - and join them in their insanity - or die.

My rating:  6.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Maybe.

I'm pretty confident that most horror movie fans would know how to react in a situation like this.  Lena (Fedori) is always trying to escape which just makes matters worse for her.  It doesn't seem like she's in danger except when she rejects the 'family' that's trying to 'adopt' her.  Lena doesn't let up.  It's frustrating after a while because I couldn't help but think that if you just went along with their plan to accept you into their family then you'd have time to scope out the joint and plot an escape that's much better than what she chooses.  It's only when she's gone too far that her life is in danger.  It's easy for me to say that because I'm just a viewer.  This theory might all go to shit if I found myself thrust into a similar situation.  I don't know and I don't want to know.  Instead I'll just speculate.  I like that this picture got me thinking about that whereas most don't.  Anyway, there's lots of gore.  The parents, especially Dad, are menacing and disgusting.  They live in a shithole which is bad enough and the filth goes downhill from there.  I LOVED the ending.  That's all I need to say about that without spoiling anything.  This is the first and only second feature from writer/director Sheil.  His other picture is DEAD MINE (2012).  It's an action horror flick about some treasure hunters searching for gold in Indonesia and they come across a WWII Japanese bunker and bad things happen to them.  It looks like it could be fun.  Is it?