Erik's thoughts on "Mama"

     So here's how it goes: Guillermo Del Toro saw a three minute foreign short from director Andres Muschietti called Mama, and it piqued his interest. With his name attached as an executive producer, Del Toro hired Muschietti to make a feature length version for American audiences, complete with a big studio (Universal), big stars (Jessica Chastain), and even bigger special effects. What started out as a single scene, low-key short with a jolt (available on Youtube), has now been beefed up with lots of jump scares, a confusing backstory, and rather unnecessary causalities. The 2013 version tends to get it right when it comes to atmospheric, non-confrontational moments of grandeur – when the camera shows an upstairs hallway and the inside of a child's bedroom in the same shot, who we think is in one turns out to be in the other, upping the suspense – but too often gets bogged down by confused logic and inept character intelligence. You have to take the good with the bad, I guess.

      With the backstory being remarkably lengthy, unfortunately much rushed in a nicely constructed pre-title sequence which plays like Misery meets The Shining, it's best to sum it up as briefly as possible. Two feral young girls are found abandoned in the woods, living in a deserted cabin only found in horror movies. As it turns out, their uncle has been searching for them. His brother, the girls' father, went AWOL five years ago, angrily offing a couple of employees at work and the girls' mother, (he tries to off a few more, but alas...). After a ludicrous court hearing that features the unqualified uncle and his girlfriend, Annabel (Chastain) gaining custody rights over a much more financially secure person on the other side of the family, the two girls attempt to re-accustom themselves to domestic living in picturesque Richmond, Virginia. And yet for some strange reason, they keep on about some Mama lady, a paranormal entity with a voice as loud as Ethel Merman and flowing hair as long as Rapunzel.

     Like any studio horror movie, there will be certain supporting characters who are instantly identifiable as stock victims. I won't say who they are (because, well, they are easily identifiable), but this one has characters walk into the unwelcoming woods in the middle of the night, yell back at distressed and troubled children, break into people's homes to find incriminating evidence, etc. One doctor character goes from learning about Mama to assuming she has to do with the older sister's multiple personality disorder. Fair enough. However, after a few butterflies and rapidly-forming wormholes are spotted in decaying wallpaper, the doc is ready to go into full-on Ghostbuster mode. 

     My main problem with Mama is that I could never understand what any of the characters wanted. The uncle wants to become super-uncle by raising his troubled nieces, sure, but does he want children of his own to bear? Annabel surely isn't interested in kids – she's introduced taking a pregnancy test, smiling when it comes out negative – but after a few minor doubts agrees to raise the girls. Then there's the meaner older woman who wants custody of the children because she knows of Annabel and her boyfriend's low-paying artsy jobs, the uncle, an animator, Annabel a rocker who loves wearing trendy band t-shirts. I can understand this, but this curmudgeon makes such a mindless decision late in the movie that we come to believe she's not playing with a full deck of cards herself. 

     And for the life of me, I still have no idea what will make the ghostly title character content. She appears mad when Annabel treats the two girls poorly and then becomes enraged when Annabel and the children start to bond. She is overly protective and wants to constantly lurk in the background of their presence, but then why doesn't she show up when the kids are taken from their cabin home in the movie's first act?

     Why does Mama transport her soul into other people's bodies for no purpose other than to provide one big "boo!" scare? Why does she desire the remains of a former dead baby when she was responsible for its death in the first place? Does she want to protect the youth of America or slaughter them? By the film's conclusion, you will assume both. Thanks to an exposition-heavy nightmare, her backstory is delved in to even deeper, but what it amounts to is that she's a crazy and deformed (in Hollywood, these traits go together) psychopath hell bent on who knows what.

     An initial premise better than its end result, Mama pays tribute to its first incarnation with a re-staging of that memorable original scene, right down to a replica of the winding staircase. That staircase serves as a catalyst for a few narrative-driven moments here, all of them rather rote. Often the film showcases Muschietti expanding on a concept filled with open-ended questions, grouping answers together within a more complex structure that often buckles under its own weight. Three writers, two Muschiettis, penned the screenplay. 

     I will give credit where credit is due, however: the big special effects-laden finale takes risks, although not all successful, which conclude the film but by no means end the story. The power struggle between Mama and Annabel eventually becomes all too literal, amounting to tug-of-wars and maternal staredowns, but the film's soul doesn't feel ripped to shreds by studio tinkering or re-writes. A real storyteller's vision is present throughout; Muschietti and I just weren't often seeing eye-to-eye.

Not Recommended