Horror Movie Review: Mother’s Day – Remake (2010)

The movie opens with an unknown woman entering a Maternity Ward where she steals a new-born baby with the help of another person who violently kills a security guard.

It’s unexpected & brutal…a great opening.

We then meet the Sohapi couple, Daniel & Beth who are having a party with some of their friends in their new home. The group are comprised of couples & a work colleague of Daniels. They all seem like a nice bunch of people unlike the trio of men that have just burst in upstairs.

The trio are brothers & one of them has been shot. Panicking they went back to their mothers house but were unaware that the house had been sold to Daniel & Beth. The brothers are comprised of the leader Ike, the unstable Addley & Johnny who is the shooting victim.

They break up the party & immediately start terrorising the guests. One of them is a Doctor (George) who is put to work on keeping Johnny alive. It seems as though they were involved in a bank robbery that went wrong. Ike makes a call to his mother but gets his sister, Lydia who tells him the house was lost to the bank.

Mother is on her way to help…

The tension leading to Mother’s arrival is excellent & her initial disappointment with Ike for losing the emergency phone she uses to contact him paints her in a nicer light. She is kind to the hostages & explains that no-one will be hurt & they will be gone soon, once they have enough money to leave the country. That is until Ike tells her that they were sending her money to this house. She confronts Daniel & Beth who both deny any knowledge of it. She believes Beth but gets her sons to smash Daniel’s hand with a snooker ball.

A failed escape attempt sees one of the girls shot & George is tasked with keeping Johnny alive or they will all die.

Needing money, Mother takes their bank cards & pin numbers & sends Ike & Beth out to collect the cash & dump the girl’s body.

This is where we get to see just how in control Mother is as she gets in Addley’s face for hitting one of the girls. However don’t let this fool you as she is probably the most psychotic out of the bunch. Things get worse & worse as the group try to survive via any means necessary.

Mother’s Day is filled with tension, it is filled with scenes to make you feel uncomfortable but none of it would matter if it wasn’t for the amazing acting of everyone involved. The characters make this film so enjoyable & it’s rare that I watch a horror where I really want to see the bad-guys get their comeuppance.

They are all so twisted & the moment when Mother tries to make one the girls have sex with her dying son so he will no longer be a virgin is messed up. The sequence of events leading to this is just as bad as she forces 2 of the male hostages to fight with the loser’s girl being the rape victim.

Watching the group fall apart & show just how selfish they all are is great but as they are put in more & more impossible situations it begins to stop feeling so dynamic.

This is where the film begins to go off the rails. I cheered them on as they broke free & together as a group stabbed Addley to death. Meanwhile Beth was fighting back against the deplorable Ike. It felt like they were getting the upper hand as Mother discovers the body of Addley. This is where the movie should have been nearing its conclusion but instead it drags on for another 40 minutes with convoluted plot twist after another.

After killing Addley the group just sit back & let Mother start killing them. Mistakes are made & an accident happens. It turns out Daniel is having an affair & they lost a baby recently.

A sub-plot about George winning Lydia over his side is abandoned in place of gratuitous violence. As the survivors fight back & kill Ike, Mother discovers Beth is pregnant & also knew about Daniel’s affair. She has the money Mother was after & was going to take it & leave her husband.

See what I mean? What the hell is all of this?

Anyway…they fight & Beth escapes leaving Mother in the burning house as the police arrive.

Months later Beth has her baby & you know that bit from the beginning? Well that happens now & it is Beth’s baby that is snatched. The final scene shows that Mother, Lydia & Johnny survived & took the baby.

I was gobsmacked by just how stupid the ending was…

Mother’s Day for 2/3rd’s of its running time is excellent with great pacing, plenty of intrigue, quality acting & tons of violence. That final 3rd though is such a massive disappointment. I just kept thinking that it should have ended 30/40 minutes earlier; that all the plot twists ended up doing was make a mess.

Think about this…so Beth has the money all along yet she allows all of this to go on. All the death is on her hands & I’m supposed to feel for her because her husband cheated on her in his grief over their dead son!?

The group kill Addley then sit back & do nothing…he was bad but Mother did worse to them. Why they just sit there makes no sense at all & left me feeling frustrated as the body count rose because of these events.

The ending though, what the hell where they thinking…It makes no sense & for a movie that had worked hard at being sensible & realistic it is so disappointing.

I found it hard to mark this one lower as it is just so good for so long. It is heart-breaking that it messes it up so badly in the end.