The Reel Critic: Mama

Horror tends to be a divisive genre of film; either you’re an adrenaline junky looking for the next great movie scare, or you can’t stand the thought of being subjected to an hour and a half of blood, gore and cheap screams. I fall in the former group. Whether a beautifully crafted psychological scare like John Carpenter’s The Thing or a campy, black-and-white monster suit classic like Creature from the Black Lagoon, there’s nothing better than a movie that really chills you to your core. While Andres Muschietti’s Mama is not the scariest film I’ve ever seen, it definitely got me to jump and is a well-designed take on a fairly straight forward ghost story.

The film follows two girls, Victoria and Lilly, who were abandoned in a cabin in the woods by their father after he committed suicide, only to be found five years later. The girls are adopted by their uncle, Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his punk-band girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). The couple, recently moved into a new house, is then tormented by a ghost that cared for the girls during their five years of solitude.

Too often, horror films — especially newer films — blur the line between “scared” and “startled,” opting to have something jump out and startle the audience every few minutes rather than building any real psychologically thrilling horror scene. Any movie can make you jump; a truly great horror film will have you on the edge of your seat, tormented by every dark room and trick of light on the screen. Mama definitely goes for the jump-out scares quite a bit, but I appreciated the ambiance built throughout the film and the story really pulled me into the couple’s struggles with the ghost making the horror deeply-rooted and psychological as well as just startling.

The two highlights of the film were the design on the ghost, Mama, and Chastain’s performance. Annabel’s character is reluctantly pulled into the position of guardian for these two girls, choosing only to stay out of her feelings towards Lucas and Chastain hits the nail on the head with her portrayal of the character. I found myself at first disliking Annabel and her frustrations over the presence of the two girls in her life, only to begin to sympathize with her as she becomes more comfortable with the role of step-mother. Juxtaposed with a cast of otherwise unknown actors, Chastain definitely stood out in the film and her character added an extra edge to the story.

I will be the first to admit that I am a sucker for monster and villain design. While a well-designed hero is important to every story, it is the antagonists and anti-heroes that I believe make or break a piece and Mama’s monster delivered in every way. For the start of the film, we saw very little of the ghost, mostly quick glimpses in the corner of the screen or —quite cleverly on the part of the filmmaker — through the weak eyes of Victoria after dropping her glasses. These attempts to hide the ghost from the audience only made the beast scarier, and added to the subplot questioning the validity of the ghost or if it was all just fabricated by the young girls.

Near the end of the film, we saw a lot more of the ghost and, unfortunately, this took away from the film for me. It was not that seeing more of the ghost highlighted flaws in the design, I just felt that the story was enhanced by a spectral monster, hidden from the audience except for the bloody aftermath of her attacks.

The design on the monster was just one part in an all-around fantastically crafted art design for the film. Each scene incorporated an immerse color scheme that held a thematic tone throughout the film and from the childish drawings scrawled on the walls of the cabin that held the young girls prisoners for five years to the otherworldly portals that oozed from the walls, signs that Mama had found her way into the house, the artistic design of the film from start to finish proved to be an extra bonus to the film as a whole.

If you’re a fan of horror films, I’d definitely recommend Mama. I’m not expecting it to find a place on the shelves next to classics like the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre or George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, but it is a fun ghost story that is beautifully shot and certain to creep you out.