Serial Mom (1994)

(On TV, April 2020) As one would expect from a Jon Waters film, Serial Mom is crammed with Baltimore scenery, dark humour and a savage dissection of suburban America’s neuroses. Kathleen Turner stars, perhaps too effectively, as an ordinary family mom who’s secretly a serial killer over trivial breaches of etiquette or politeness (especially toward her children). It doesn’t take a long time for Waters to use his slasher-like comic premise for satirical purposes, whether he’s describing a terrifyingly mundane kind of evil, or the media furor that surrounds high-profile murder trials. There’s quite a bit of camp in the result, to good effect. Waters clearly had the necessary means to execute his vision, and the result is one of his slickest, most professional-looking films. The concept is fun and the execution is up to the task—Serial Mom gets top notes: no questions asked, no disrespect meant.