Keith Curran

It was a pretty TERRIFIC MOVIE then, like TOO MANY MOVIES TODAY, it didn’t END. It just… STOPPED! WHY are writers and directors DOING this to us now? NO MORE ENDINGS! It’s bad movie-making, lazy as hell, and abusive to the audience. TOTAL SPOILERS: The movie begins with happy, loving MOM, putting her twin sons to bed by singing them to sleep. Cut to the twins being dropped off at mom’s by their ex-Dad. The boys go in, can’t find mom, who then slithers out of a dark corner with her face TOTALLY COVERED in BANDAGES. She says that she’d just had a “procedure”, and, also, her boys can’t tell ANYONE, they can’t go in her bedroom… or go in THE BARN… then proceeds, over the next three days, to act like, VERY OBVIOUSLY, a TOTALLY DIFFERENT PERSON! She SCREAMS at her sons (which she never did before). She uses vulgar language (ditto), she smokes (ditto), drinks (ditto), and doesn't know the song she always sings to her sons at bedtime. Then, she almost yanks one of their arms off dragging him to the tub to spray cold water in his face. The other son EVEN OVERHEARS HER, on the phone, saying,”I seriously don't know how much longer I can PRETEND!” Okay, not exactly SUBTLE, but, finally, one son yells “YOU’RE NOT OUR MOTHER (duh)!”. She gets FURIOUS and locks herself in her room. Where she begins to PEEL OFF HER HEAD-TO-TOE RUBBER SKIN revealing that she’s actually a green/black LIZARD-WOMAN! Then, the boys try unsuccessfully to run away. The police, lying to them, take them home to mom. WHOSE FACE IS NOW NO LONGER BANDAGED! One son, confused, decides that, NOW, she IS his mother. His brother still believes she’s an imposter. Regardless, they tie her to her bed Exorcist-style then CALL AN UBER to run away again. But, the one son TRULY believes his mother is his mother again, so he runs back and unties her. HIS brother is now… nowhere. But, “mom” says to her untying son, that she has to “Show him something”, and drags the terrified boy out to the barn and up the loft and shows him BLOOD on the wall, near a BULLET HOLE. She babbles; “You didn't mean to do it, it was a mistake”, implying that HE SHOT his BROTHER! (and that the brother he’s been running around with ALL WEEK was imaginary). SO, when was, um, his dead brother’s FUNERAL? The investigation into who murdered the boy? And, his mother deciding to get a FACE LIFT days after her son killed her other son?). Meanwhile, in the loft, SON PUSHES MOM, who breaks through a WOOD RAIL (the same rail hundreds of other actors have broken through over the years), she falls, and lies, dead, on the barn floor. OF COURSE a lantern mom was carrying sets light to the hay in the barn, which is IMMEDIATELY an INFERNO. The son runs out of the barn, saving his life. He collapses, crying… then someone reaches out and touches him. He looks up. IT’S DEAD BURNED-UP LIZARD MOM! NOT all crispy in the barn, but fresh as a daisy right in front of him! And, NEXT to HER? The brother he shot dead! Mom says, “Its all going to be okay”, leaving us with SCORES of questions. Fine! Can’t wait to find out the answers! The screen goes black, as it has between every scene, with me assuming there’s at LEAST one more scene, explaining, oh, I don’t know, why MOM’S a LIZARD? The alive SHOT-DEAD BROTHER? And, how DEAD--MOM got out of the INFERNO? Anyway, THIS black screen seems to STRETCH OUT a bit, and I actually say, “No. You are not doing this!” And, then… the credits start floating up the screen. I yelled, “No! Not AGAIN!” AARRGGHH! So… STOP IT!

An idea that gets itself so satisfyingly it feels no real need for US to get it. I mean, beyond the satire, to really GET it. Ideas are not enough.