Director: Brian Taylor
Year: 2018
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Slasher
Plot:
After a seemingly innocuous day, a teen and her friends find that a strange virus of unknown origin has been unleashed turning the parents in the community into a ravenous killing machine targeting only their own children and must find a way to get her brother to safety and avoid her parents.
Review:
This one proved to bean enjoyable if problematic effort. One of the better aspects here is the fine setup that manages to hint at something going on from the start. The first half has a rather pronounced air of impending dread that continually builds up, not only from the isolated attacks on the outskirts of the story to the air of dread surrounding the students while they're at school where the looks from the teachers and the other staff directed at them which offers hints at something ominous happening.
That, in turn, leads to the wholly enjoyable series of encounters where the parents go crazy on their kids. The attack at the school is plenty of fun detailing the masses swarming over the barricades to get to their kids causes a lot of dark ideas and thrilling action, while the scene in the best friends' house is quite fun. With the final half being a continuous onslaught against their kids which gets plenty of action, back-and-forth battle tactics from both sides and the great curveball with the parents showing up to throw a monkey wrench in the proceedings, this finely thrilling section offers plenty to like and holds it up over its few flaws.
The main problem with the film is that, despite having a rather dark theme present, it's not as full-throttle as it really should be. The film is remarkably restrained in the sense of not really going as far with this subject matter as it really should, handling most of the parents' actions towards their kids off-screen and just revolving around the concept to really handle the scenes. The only real scene that showcases this is the attack at the school where this shows the parents literally climbing the walls and pushing over security forces to be able to get to their kids which is a rather curious effort considering the difficulty they have in the final half of the film.
The other problem here is the excruciatingly terrible technical problems that just make the film somewhat painful to get through. The constant usage of shaky-camera that occurs during each and every sequence of a parent attacking their child, which comes from the Action-movie background here, really undermines the sequence by making it nearly impossible to tell what's happening by disorienting and jarring the action at it's most important point. There's way too much of that throughout the film and it's rather distracting to constantly be knocked out of the film due to that. Still, these issues are enough to drag it down slightly.
Overview: *** 1/2/5
As there's some rather enjoyable elements to be had here even with some rather distracting and disorienting flaws that are enough to keep this down somewhat. Give this a shot if you're into this kind of genre fare or curious about this due to the hype it's brought out, while those who are turned off by the flaws should heed caution here.
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