'Mama' Review Off of VoD

Mama (2013)
PG-13, 100 min   -   Horror  / Thriller
Director / Writer (story) (screenplay) Andy Muschietti
Cast: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse

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It starts out with daddy having shot mom, grabbing their two daughters, and running to the mountains, finding a remote cabin to hide from the authorities in. 

The dad is hell bent on killing himself and his two daughters but before he can put a bullet in the back of one of his daughters, something stops him, snapping his neck and dragging his body off into the blurry distance..

We skip to five years later, the "dad's" brother has been spending his time and money looking for them.

And of course, the search team finds the cabin, and subsequently, the two girls.  But they seem like rabid, skittering creatures, malnourished from all the years "alone."

Dad's brother and his rock band girlfriend get custody of the girls, and unknowingly to them, "mama" comes along with the girls.  And things begin to happen to our adoptive parent-figures.

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I've been looking forward to seeing this movie because the sales pitches all referencing Guillermo del Toro.  (Executive Producer) He has a great imagination, and I've developed a blind sort of faith in his work ever since reading 'The Strain' vampire trilogy.

So I came into this movie with a bit more expectation than I normally would most horror flicks.  Despite the fact he didn't seem to have much behind the script or directing.

And as we all know, sometimes expectation can undo us as it sets the bar sometimes too high for the movies we go to see.

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You can tell the crew behind this had fun pulling this movie together and slapping in a lot of classic scary clues and visuals into it. 

Coster-Waldau played the brother (Actually, both brothers), and wasn't distracting.  (It was weird seeing him outside his Game of Thrones role... all cleaned up, in modern-day wear.)

I like Jessica Chastain's character journey, starting out as the rocker girlfriend who doesn't have any interest in children, was pretty spot on.

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In Mama, acts one and two have the usual, vengeful or protective ghost antics.  But act three, seemingly coming around to be the classic closer to a ghost movie, changes the tone on ya and throws out a bit of a curve ball.

A curve ball of which, I will not be telling you about.  That's for you to discover.

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When I watch horror flicks, there's only so much any filmmaker can do with their film.  If you think about all the horror films that have come before, this newest addition to the genre has to, in some way, distinguish itself.

The first two thirds of Mama fell into the atypical assets of the genre, but there was an interesting turn of events in act three and there were a few good moments that delivered a flock of goosebumps.

This kept Mama afloat for me and it landed the movie at a 6 on my "popcorn movie" review scale!  I didn't mind dropping the rental money on this movie...  and I think if you catch it on TV, if you make it to the third act, I think you'll find it interesting.  At best.



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