MOM AND DAD

Cert 15 Running time 86 minutes

★★★★ Nicolas Cage unleashes his inner maniac to demented effect in this outrageous and funny satirical comedy horror.

Often uncomfortable to watch and daring to voice unspeakable truths, he and Selma Blair play a very ordinary middled-aged suburban couple with two kids.

One day a mass psychosis grips their nondescript town, and parents start murdering their own children.

It’s amazing how homes lend themselves to inflicting bodily harm, what with all the power tools, wire coat hangers and cooking implements lying around. And this being the US, personal firearms are also involved.

Brutal, mercilessly acerbic and mercifully brief, it shows parenting is not all love and kisses, but jealousy, resentment and a form of madness.

Watching Cage work out his aggression was curiously cathartic for me, and I’m not sure it’s healthy to laugh as much as I did.

My son should be grateful I didn’t see this when he was teething.