Mama Review
By Casey Douglass
Image ©Universal Pictures
If you go down to the
woods today, you’ll be sure to find a big surprise. Two kids left
in a scabby old hut and a ghost with wonky eyes.
Sorry, I couldn’t
resist. Mama is the story of two young girls who are abandoned in a
dingy cabin in a typically bleak looking forest. In typical horror
fashion, they aren’t alone, but in this case, the cranky spirit
actually cares for and looks after them. This is fine until five
years later, their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his
girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) adopt them and move into a new
home under the supervision of Dr Gerald Dreyfuss who is in charge of
seeing that the now quite feral girls are looked after properly and
are in the best environment. The bad thing for pretty much everyone
involved is that the spirit, called Mama, moves in with them.
I felt in some ways,
that it was very much a film of two halves. The first half was more
subtle, with some really good sleight-of-hand scares. A great example
of this is a scene in which the two sisters are playing in their room
framed through an open doorway. The camera changes to what Annabel is
doing and then back to the sisters. You can see one still playing but
it isn’t until the other walks across the hallway behind Annabel
that you realise that Mama is playing with the other one. It was very
effective and happened a number of times in different ways.
The latter part of the
film fell prey to the usual cinematic horror mistake of showing too
much of the monster. Mama was still suitably otherworldly and strange
looking, but after prolonged exposure to her, you began to see how
the CGI just wasn’t that good in places. There were also some
scenes that bordered on the comical which also detracted from the
thrill of watching a good horror. It was a far cry from the early
part of the film which had people looking up into corners of the room
and not knowing why they felt uncomfortable.
I felt Jessica Chastain
stole the show with her moody rock-band-playing Annabel who was
subject to a good deal of Mama’s tormenting. This is in stark
contrast to another character who was purely in the film to be
disliked and to become fodder for Mama. The girls were suitable
creepy however and played feral children very well.
The film has a
bitter-sweet ending which I felt fitted it well, and a little more
insight into Mama is given which almost aroused feelings of pity for
her.
I would give Mama 3.5
out of 5 if I had to rate it. It didn’t really make me jump that
much, but then it wasn’t the kind of film to use cheap tricks (like
sudden loud noise) to inspire scares.
