Year: 1994
Director: John Waters
Writer: John Waters
Genre: Slasher, Comedy
I adore John Waters but have since having only seen one film of his. Over time, I have slowly worked through his filmography. Serial Mom is one that has continually evaded my watching pleasure, but I'm glad to have finally given it a watch.
The basest assessment of the film would peg it as a slasher, and it is. People are killed time and time again and it's routinely bloody. However, the film is not about fearing the killer or even being led on as to who it is. We all know who the serial killer is just by looking at the title of the film. The overly-peppy, restrained mother makes the perfect killer as you can't help but laugh at the strangeness of it all.
The piece seems to primarily speak of Western society and its full blown obsession with fame. Even when everyone knows that the mother is a psychopath she is given the star treatment. Everyone idolizes her as someone better than Freddy or Jason because she's an actual being. People are caught up with their obsessions and are unable to hate such a lovely, charismatic woman.
This is one of those Waters' films that seems tailor made to appeal to a wider audience. Perhaps not so much as Hairspray, but it is still pretty close. There's nothing wrong with that but it always interests me to see Waters create films beyond his original style. Definitely a fun watch for fans of horror comedy.
Both my husband and I love this film. In fact, my husband once used the screenshot featured in this post as his PC desktop wallpaper :) You're right, of course, that it's one of Waters' more mainstream films, but like Hairspray I wouldn't say that's a bad thing at all.
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