Mom and Dad
Mom and Dad is a weird film, and since it stars Nicolas Cage, that’s saying something. It tries to be a hybrid of genres, combining zombie and home-invasion styles to create something new and utterly terrifying. Except it isn’t terrifying in the least. And it isn’t interesting, funny, exciting, or well-acted. It’s a giant turd of a film, and when you watch it you can’t help but wonder how something like this ever got financed. The premise is a mind-control signal is broadcast on TV, and any parent who sees it wants to kill their children. They don’t want to kill other children, just their own. The parents act like fast-running zombies while they try to kill their children. However, the bulk of the film takes place in a house, with the kids trying to escape being killed by their parents. The movie is peppered with flashbacks which don’t work, and go on for far too long. The music is mostly heavy metal, which clashes with the 70s vibe they go for visually. The acting is atrocious, although Cage gives his usual 110% so he can’t really be faulted. It doesn’t offer any explanation for why this happened, any cure for the parents, or even an ending. It just stops mid-sentence, in fact. It’s a slog to get through as it offers little to grab onto, and no characters to identify with. I have read that this is a “black comedy” but there’s no fucking way that was the original intent. The film is utterly bereft of humor. I think the marketers slapped the “black comedy” label on it after it failed at being any other genre. Fuck this movie, what a waste of time.
Verdict: Shitty
The Witch
The Witch has been heralded as a modern horror masterpiece. Horror is a bit of a stretch, and masterpiece isn’t even a part of the equation. It’s a boring, turgid film that will test the patience of any seasoned film-goer. It takes place in colonial America, and an ultra-religious family is kicked out of town to go live in the countryside. While there, strange things begin to happen. Unfortunately, strange does not equate with interesting. Nothing interesting happens at all. The family just goes from scene to scene, fucking around, being boring, praying, and farming. A few times, when it seems like something interesting might happen, the film cuts away so you don’t see it. The filmmakers are so obsessed with building atmosphere, that they do it at the expense of things happening. It become excessively aggravating as you desperately want something, anything to happen, but the film refuses to attempt anything noteworthy. The culmination, with everyone dying, happens in the last five minutes or so. And then, the main actress goes off into the woods to become a bride of Satan. Apparently, the goat was supposed to be Satan or something, but whatever, who gives a shit? A movie this boring cannot be considered scary in the slightest. But as cure for insomnia? Certainly.
Verdict: Shitty
Awesomely Shitty 
Not seen either of these but thanks for the warning! Mom and Dad sounds like a poor concept for a movie to begin with, although there are ways they could have worked with the idea to make it decent but it sounds like they opted to make it dumb and tactless instead.
I once met Nicholas Cage briefly and he said nothing, he just slowly revealed from his inside pocket a picture of himself dressed up as a nun.
That never really happened but it sounds more credible than this film and would probably have been a better core concept for a movie, by the sounds of it.
As for The Witch (such an imaginative title), aren’t there silly myths of Satan incarnating on earth as the result of a woman copulating with a goat or something? I’ve heard something like that before. Anyway, it sounds like the movie should have started where it actually ended. The first five minutes should have been a bunch of deaths (just for the sake of it), then the witch goes off into the woods and mates with a goat, then later she gives birth to satan, then you could have the locals (led by the local priest perhaps) trying to kill the evil baby satan while the witch fends them off with her supernatural powers, using black magic and what not. Could have been good.
WTF is wrong with movie writers these days? Have they forgotten how to make an interesting movie?
I’ll watch anything with Nicolas Cage, regardless of how bad it is. And this one was really bad. It was definitely a paycheck movie for him. The less said about The Witch, the better. Yes, I think that goats have been associated with Satan for some time. But that doesn’t mean in a film, that takes place on a farm, I’m immediately going to think of Satan when the camera pans over a goat. It was terribly written and directed.