Families can be…complicated and “complicated” is an understatement for the Jennings family in ‘Mother Father Sister Brother Frank.’ This first feature for writer/director Caden Douglas comes out swinging with madcap comedy and over the top blood-soaked butchery. A perfectly balanced dark comedy, ‘Mother Father Sister Brother Frank’ keeps the audience engaged by giving us a family to root for, an excellently sinister villain in Uncle Frank, and a few offbeat side characters who pop in at just the right moments.
We join the Jennings family as they are sitting down for the Sunday dinner that mom, Joy (Mindy Cohn) insists continue even though the children, Jolene (Melanie Leishman) and Jim (Iain Stewart) are grown and living their own lives. Things already seem a bit off with everyone when dad, Jerry (Enrico Colantoni) breaks out the “good” wine, declaring “Costco had a sale.” As everyone struggles with whether or not to disclose the secrets they are struggling with, a knock at the door reveals estranged and hated…Uncle Frank (Juan Chioran). When Frank threatens to tear apart the fabric of the family, the Jennings, perhaps accidentally, band together to make sure that can never happen. Covering up a murder wasn’t exactly in their plans for the evening and without the skills for such things chaos ensues.
Credit: K2 PublicityAs the family scrambles to do the physical work of getting rid of Uncle Frank nothing goes right. A neighbor comes by looking for her lost dog, Jim’s husband Pete (played hilariously by Izad Etemadi) shows up for a drunken confrontation, and you know that the police eventually show up. The tension in this film comes not from the crime itself but from wondering if this mild mannered, and mostly inept, family can really pull this off, and if they can accept each other’s truths and come out the other side together.
With a fairly tight run-time no minutes are wasted and once the wine is poured the ride is off. As the action happens Douglas is deftly working in character details to keep the family relatable and loveable. Even as things grow more outlandish they still feel completely believable and plausible. As good as the writing is, it’s the acting that truly brings this film home. Cohn and Colantoni absolutely nail it as the sweet but overbearing parents who are trying not to lose the cozy retirement they’ve worked so hard for. Leishman and Stewart play the siblings with equal parts reverence and exasperation toward their parents and each other. Although his acting time is rather brief, Chioran completely wrecked the room as vile Frank, leaving me truly not caring what happened to him at the clumsy hands of the rest of the Jennings clan.
Credit: K2 PublicityIn his after screening Q&A at the Panic Fest World Premiere Douglas said that he was pulling from his own life experience growing up queer in a conservative area to craft the family and how it feels to hold secrets. Putting himself into the story in that way definitely shows in the final product. This film is heartfelt and touching while also being laugh out loud funny and deranged. And perhaps the best part…when it’s time to get bloody it gets messy as hell! Thankfully Costco had rolls of plastic on sale that week!
I truly hope this film gets a theater run because seeing it with a crowd is an absolute blast, but it will also be worth a watch at home to catch all the things I couldn’t hear over the laughter of the audience.
‘Mother Father Sister Brother Frank’ had its World Premiere screening at Panic Fest on April 6th 2024.
