Mom Likes To Help: Compassion and Taboo in Equal Measure
Mom Likes To Help is an unexpected entry in the world of grindhouse cinema. It’s a film that uses the familiar trappings of exploitation to deliver something unexpectedly gentle. At just twenty-three minutes, it manages to upend the viewer’s assumptions about what a grindhouse short can be.
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Rather than reveling in cruelty, violence, or erotic excess, this film uses its shock value to express empathy, warmth, and the messy tenderness of human connection.
The story opens in typical low-budget fashion: handheld camera, muted lighting, and a quiet domestic setting. A young man sits alone, scrolling on his phone with a look that mixes confusion and shame. The audience is left to assume the worst. But as soon as the older blonde woman enters the frame, the film’s tone changes. She’s curious, motherly, slightly intrusive. Her questions start casual but soon carry emotional weight. What begins as suspicion unfolds into understanding, as she realizes the young man isn’t indulging in pornography but wrestling with questions about his sexuality and identity.
Here, Mom Likes to Help earns its name. The woman’s instinct to assist, to comfort, and to guide becomes the emotional centerpiece of the film. It’s not about voyeurism, it’s about empathy. Mom’s attempts to reach him aren’t moralistic or judgmental; they’re instinctively nurturing. The grindhouse label sets up the expectation of exploitation, but the “exploitation” here is emotional rather than physical. The shock is that there is no shock, only understanding.
The POV-style cinematography intensifies this intimacy. The camera, standing in for the young man’s eyes, forces the viewer into his emotional space. Her gaze meets the lens repeatedly, creating a disarming connection that feels personal and uncomfortably real. To amplify this tension, the rustle of fabric, the soft tone of her voice, the long pauses between questions. It’s all done with minimalist precision, evoking the voyeuristic tone of grindhouse classics, but subverting it completely. The viewer expects transgression but receives compassion instead.
Mom Likes to Help, not exploit
What makes Mom Likes to Help so compelling is that it doesn’t shy away from taboo subjects, yet it never feels exploitative. Mom’s recognition of the young man’s inner turmoil is framed as a human moment rather than a sexualized one. She offers comfort, not seduction. The film’s emotional climax, her promise not to tell his father and her confession of affection, is sincere. In a genre built on cynicism and spectacle, this moment feels almost radical.
As a piece of grindhouse filmmaking, the video’s aesthetics remain true to form. The grainy filter, uneven lighting, and abrupt editing style root it firmly in the underground tradition. The imperfections of the film add authenticity, suggesting something real and spontaneous. It feels like an artifact from another era, rediscovered and given new meaning.
Physical Pleasure as a Nurturing Comfort
Beneath its rough surface, though, Mom Likes to Help delivers a rare kind of storytelling. It dares to suggest that empathy can exist within the grindhouse aesthetic. That the grotesque and the gentle can occupy the same frame. It’s not a comfortable watch, but it’s an oddly healing one.
In a world where shock cinema often strives for outrage, Mom Likes to Help stands apart as a film that weaponizes kindness. In the realm of underground cinema, where exploitation usually overshadows emotion. Here we are reminded that even in the dirtiest corners of genre film-making, humanity still flickers.
