Mother's Day (18)

Starring: Rebecca De Mornay, Jaime King, Shawn Ashmore

The Desperate Hours, with a sick twist. Rebecca De Mornay plays the matriarch of a criminal clan who, following a botched bank job, hide out in the suburban midwest house they once owned and take hostage the terrified new occupants.

With one of her sons dying from a gut shot, De Mornay is in no mood to compromise, and after an initial feint of moderation, she ups the stakes drastically. The house becomes a Darwinian crucible of survival as friend turns on friend and the family's creepy internal dynamic turns fiendish. Director Darren Lynn Bousman, a graduate of the Saw franchise, is plainly no stranger to ordeal cinema (or fake blood) but he's also no slouch when it comes to developing tension: it's the kind of scenario in which simply killing people isn't enough, they have to be tortured viciously beforehand. De Mornay is the star draw, camping up her psycho-mom act to the level of delirium. ("Mother's Here", a spoken line, would have been a better title). All through the film she kept reminding me of someone, but I couldn't work out who. Then I got it. The immaculate coiff, the gimlet-eyed stare, the sense of controlled rage: oh my God, it's Hillary Clinton!