MAMA

I don't review a lot of horror films on this site. It's not that that I don't like the genre, it's just that I'm fickle about it and a lot of the stuff out there doesn't interest me, but every now and than I'm inclined to dip my toe in. I did have some raised expectations for Mama however as it was produced by bona fide horror master Guillermo Del Toro and boasts an intriguing premise.

After the 2008 financial crash a banker goes mad, kills his wife and takes his 2 young daughters to a cabin in the woods for a murder-suicide. The girls survive, the father doesn't. Years later the girls are found still living in the cabin, now feral. When asked how they survived all those years, they point to an "imaginary" guardian named Mama.

After being cleaned up, the girls are placed with their uncle Luke (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, trying desperately to hide his accent) and his rocker girlfriend who, for some reason, is played by current Oscar nominee Jessica Chastian. If nothing else, this will be remembered as the movie were Jessica Chastain plays bass guitar and dresses as Lisbeth Slander light.

Unfortunately, that may be all it's remembered for as the film grows tedious and repetitive. We get lots of scenes of Luke and Chastain going about their day-to-day lives as the girls wonder around being wired, occasionally startling their foster parents by suddenly appearing next to them. Actually, I don't think it's the girls startling everyone as much as it's the loud sound effects that seem to follow them around. The sounds also strike during seemingly every scene transition to hilarious effect. It's as if first time director Andrés Muschietti was playing cinematic peekaboo with the audience. It's often startling, but never scary.

Scary would have involved tension and dread of some kind, but all the jump scares kill any sense of atmosphere the film might have had. It might have also helped to build some sort of relationship between the foster parents and the girls instead of just having the kids parade around on all fours. A really interesting movie could certainly be made about a pair of feral children reentering society but being haunted by a monster of some kind. It could be a fun mesh of psychological and supernatural thrillers the way The Shining or Halloween were. Starting with something real or believable before venturing off into the unknowable, but instead we get jump-scares.

Then there's the monster. Rarely have I gone into a movie so excited for a monster only to leave so disappointed. She looks completely conventional and moves in a jerky manor that suggests all sorts of recent monsters. I kept thinking she looked like an adult version of Samara from The Ring with more leaves in her hair. Also, it would have been best if the film didn't try to explain Mama. Instead, we're given a fairly extensive history complete with odd-colored flashbacks (the only time the film adopts a visual style of any kind) that play like C-grade Stephen King.

The end kind of pulls itself together. There are some effective moments near the end when it seems as if Mama has turned on the girls. There's a great tracking shot (which Muschietti copies from the short film on which this film is based) that follows the girls through the house that has all the tension, fear and dread that we should have been feeling throughout the film. We also get some of the missing character moments but by then it's too little too late. I love Del Toro as a director, but if he's going to keep producing movies, he's got to bring the same level of dedication he brings to his directorial efforts. Somewere in here is a movie I want to see, instead I got a film that affirmed my prejudices against modern horror. 

Grade: C+