Raising a difficult son alone can be tough, especially when he’s a sociopath, you’re in your forties and possibly crazy as well, and you are both at your wit’s end with each other. Writer/director Tucia Lyman’s film, Mothers of Monsters aka M.O.M. is a smart, well-paced, and well-cast film whose found-footage style leaves nothing hidden during its exploration of a contentious mother/son family dynamic, yet still culminates in a shocking ending.

Mothers of Monsters is a horror in the sense that birthing a “bad kid” is every parent’s worst nightmare. It is psychological being that the sanity of both the paranoid mother and the short-tempered son are in question, and the audience is left to discern who went crazy first, the chicken or the egg? The film does an excellent job of casting doubt on each character through tense, short video diaries that escalate in level of disturbingness. Its story is grounded in the deep reality of current events, giving commentary on the seemingly ever-growing disconnect between youth and adults, reality and sanity, and violence and consequences.

Mothers of Monsters follows single mother Abby (Melinda Page Hamilton) and her son Jacob (Bailey Edwards) who struggle to live together, both accusing the other of being crazy. Abby, however, fears that her son will not only harm her but is also planning to shoot up his high school, sighting a history of violence and his increasingly uncontrollable attitude. Abby begins making video diaries of his heated and sometimes menacing interactions with her and also documents the concerning items in his room that point towards his radicalized-supremacist, psychopathic tendencies. Abby’s concerns going unvalidated by school officials, psychiatrists, or police prompts her to take matters into her own hands, with dire consequences.

Mothers of Monsters‘ video-diary style makes the content too real, but it is a good kind of discomfort. The film brought to mind 2011’s We Need To Talk About Kevin, which similarly questioned unconditional love by pitting a mother against her out-of-control son, though I would say that Mothers of Monsters offers a more heavy-handed portrayal due to its style. This found-footage style falters when the film splices in videos of Jacob with his friends; though the film might feel claustrophobic without these respites from their house, if it were truly found footage, we would only have the footage from his mother’s cameras. Also, the camera cuts back and forth during conversations at times. But director Tucia Lyman had fun with this method, putting found footage within found footage, which added a creative, extra layer to the film. It could use some editing, but despite minor cracks in its method Mothers of Monsters delivers a thought-provoking film that is worth a watch.

This movie is brave, and necessary in a time where it could make a powerful impact because of the importance of mental health at this moment in time, especially in relation to potential mass shooters. Its content is distressing, but since its structure seems like a methodical scientific approach where the first act presents the mother’s hypothesis (suspicions), the 2nd act is the research (surveillance), and the 3rd and final act is the (slightly over-the-top) conclusive results, the film addresses its heavy issues without feeling like it is taking advantage of sensationalizing social crises. Tucia Lyman’s found-footage thriller Mothers of Monsters is now open at the Arena Cinelounge in Los Angeles and streaming on DigitalHD via Amazon.

6.5 out of 10 ☠️