Running time: 1 hr 40 min
Rating: 2/5 stars
(Contains spoilers) Horror meets fantasy in “Mama” – a favorite hybrid genre of executive producer Guillermo del Toro, whose creative specter can be felt throughout the film. The result in this case, however, is a formulaic one, and the re-use of many horror films standards (cliches) doom “Mama” to wander the long hall of mediocre ghost stories.
Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and rocker girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) have found themselves embroiled in a family tragedy. Lucas’ twin brother, Jeffrey (also Coster-Waldau) has gone and killed his wife and kidnapped his two young daughters, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and younger Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse). In his flight to escape, Jeffrey skids off an icy road and plummets down into a ravine. Uninjured and with daughters in tow, the three walk for a distance through some snowy woods until they come across an old abandoned cabin. Predictably, the cabin is not quite as uninhabited as it would seem, and before long Jeffrey is taken out by a shadowy and malevolent ghost (Mama), who beings to rear the orphaned
children in the company of moths. A couple years later, Victoria and Lilly, nearly feral, are found and given to the care of Lucas, Annabel, and a Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash).
Despite being moved out of the woods and into a new environment, Victoria and Lilly are followed by their phantom caretaker and her moths, and continue to interact with her. During one encounter, Lucas is briefly introduced to Mama as she emerges from a wall. It frightens him so badly that he wheels backwards and falls down a flight of steps. He spends much of the remainder of the film in the hospital, leaving a reluctant Annabel to babysit the bizarre, moth-eating little girls in a haunted house. During hypnotherapy sessions with Dreyfuss, Victoria begins to tell details of Mama. Based on these accounts and after research into forgotten old archives, Dreyfuss pieces together the story of Mama. She was a 19th century patient in a mental institution who, being forced to hand over a baby, killed a sanatorium sister and fled. Desperate and pursued to the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake, she jumps, babe in arms. But during the long descent, the baby slips from Mama’s grasp, and it’s in this state of terror and separation that Mama plunges into the water without her child, and dies. A ghost, we have learned from films past (“Ju-on”/”The Grudge”, for example) is a spirit that perpetually relives strong emotions surrounding a death. Ergo, Mama and her jealous attachment to Victoria and Lilly. We have also learned from Japanese horrors that ghosts are mostly recognizable by their insane hair.
When Victoria begins expressing fondness for Annabel, Mama is pushed to the limits and (literally) flies into a fit of rage. She kidnaps the girls, taking them to the same cliff where she had thrown herself off over a century before. It’s here at the climax of the story that the genre shifts to the more fantastical one. Victoria remains on the precipice with an injured Annabel while Lilly and a gentler, more motherly Mama wrap themselves in a cocoon-like swaddle before plunging into the dark blue depths. Ah, but they manifest again – as moths – as the living mourn on the ledge.
The premise is only original to the point of distinguishing itself from dozens of others – aided by some inspired direction – but in
every other way, we’ve seen it before: the freaky children, the swinging chandeliers, the flickering lights, the eerie music, the cheap scares, the formulaic deaths of the authority character (here, Dr. Dreyfuss) and other peripherals, the wild-haired ghoul, the rigid, twisting corpses, the familiar storyline. Then we have the sudden genre shift which doesn’t work; it’s too little too late. Are we supposed to care about Mama at this point? And when the greatest tension has less to do with the narrative kind and more to do with anticipation of some smart, original twist which never materializes, any film is sure to fizzle – none more so than yet another horror film that doesn’t resolve well.
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For More Information Visit:
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http://www.movieweb.com/movie/mama
http://www.facebook.com/mamafilm
http://www.mamamovie.com
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2023587/combined
