Mama (2013)

the audience applauded

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

An investment banker Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coaster- Waldau) has a breakdown and kills his wife and two colleagues. He takes his two infant daughters to a cabin in the woods and plans to kill them but they are saved by some entity that protects the girls and raises them. They call her Mama.For five years the girls' uncle, Lucas (also Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) has led a search for the girls and they are found in the cabin. Lucas faces a custody battle with the girl's grandmother but a doctor and a medical institute come to his assistance. Lucas raises them with his rock singer girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain.) When Lucas is hospitalised after an accident, Annabel reluctantly looks after the kids but Mama has been visiting the girls.The film is produced by Guillermo Del Toro and has elements of a dark twisted gothic fairy tale where things certainly go bump in the night. It is dark and creepy but by the end a little too dark as you cannot see what is going on. It probably is deliberate as the film literally falls of a cliff to a messy and stupid ending.

So in all honesty, I'm picky about my horror. If the film implies there's a monster it had darn well better be a monster, I don't care of it's Godzilla or something more paranormal. Seems to me these days 'horror' is less about those things and more about the scary thing being the product of mental illness or just some creepy but ultimately human thing. Or on a Saw level just blood and gore and guts and not anything else that's actually scary.This is where I wish there were more movies like Mama. It's a perfect balance of yes, there is actually a monster combined with the perfect amount of jump scares in just the right places. Not so many as to make them less effective over the course of the movie, but enough to keep you on edge as to where the next one might be.On top of that it involves children being the creepy ones in addition to the monster, and children being creepy always just seems to add to the scary factor of a movie.This has become one of my favorite horror movies over the years, one I keep turning to as a prime example of what the horror genre should be.

I watched this movie because it is the It director's movie. I intend to watch It this weekend so would like to see first how he worked with his old movie, after all they are the same horror genre. I must say I am disappointed with Mama. It is just an OK movie. There were so many CG involved and it made the story unconvincing. Hopefully, he has already improved his directing skill with It. Let's see.

I am a huge fan of movies like Pan's Labyrinth and had medium-high hopes for Mama so that I bought it without having seen it in the theater first. Totally. Worth It. I loved the classic ghost story twist with a storyline involving a woman who wasn't your typical girlfriend and more interested in rocking out than being a step-mom to 2 feral children. I loved the set design, and felt shivers from my screen.... I LOVED the special effects and that one scene where the little girl is playing "tug a pillow" wow... That really got me. The ending I know has some people annoyed but for me it was satisfying and the only real way that everything that followed could be wrapped up. There could never be a happy ending here, but there could be some kind of closure. My only issue? The wig that Jessica Chastain had to wear. They could have done better by her.