Mama Review

• 16th Feb 2013

Mama is the Guillermo Del Toro-produced, Andrés Muschietti-directed, horror fairytale about the fate of two young orphans left alone in a forest. After a violent breakdown, Jeffrey (Game of Thrones’ Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) abducts his two young children and heads for the hills. After crashing on the icy mountain roads, they stumble into the woods where they find shelter in a broken-down cabin. To Jeffrey’s dismay and death, they soon discover isn’t as empty as it seems. Just as it seems the children alone and doomed to starve in the filthy cabin, a cherry is carefully rolled towards them – they have a protector.

When they are eventually discovered (and of course they will be discovered), the girls are little more than animals, skittering about like spiders. More than a few disturbing moments are gleaned from their shocking appearance. And why is it that anything child-related, coupled with some eerie music is immediately sinister? The storytelling trick at the beginning of the film, with scrawled drawings on the walls of the rickety cottage, is both neat and effective. In these creepy pictures, we see the girls devolve to their feral selves, as well as the occasional appearance of a floating figure that appears to be looking after them; this is Mama. Five years on and their uncle Luke (also played by Coster-Waldau) has used up almost all his resources, including his girlfriend’s patience, to find his missing family. But bringing them home is not particularly easy with girlfriend Annabel’s (Jessica Chastain) lack of maternal affection – especially when Mama’s possessiveness kicks in.

Chastain is a peculiar choice for this role, and one that just doesn’t work. Annabel is working all the rock-band clichés. Dyed black hair. Tattoo sleeved. Beer drinking. Swearing. Hating children. Designed to be rebellious and cool, it just comes off as petulant and childish. She is clearly playing dress-up. And although there is some rare genuine emotion popping through her ‘dude’ persona, it’s very tiresome and utterly annoying. Her work on Zero Dark Thirty precludes the possibility that she can’t act, but maybe she can’t act this because it bears so little resemblance to her own personality. She does seem very square. Regardless of her flawed performance, the reluctant mother figure is central to the film. It comes down to Annabel Vs Mama. The film very much gives the spotlight to the two child actors. And rightly so. Creepy and charming, the girls are excellent as both their feral, animalistic personas and as their later softened, semi-civilised selves.

As usual, when Mama is all shadows and grasping darkness the scares are much more forthcoming. Some genuine shocks filter through – the creepiness is initially excellent. Predictably, as soon as she is revealed in her all deformed, swirling glory, the tension is somewhat shattered. Her story is so conventional to ghost stories, it is annoying. There are also too many horror film clichés to count, with definite shades of American remake The Ring. Black bruise-like marks on the walls that vomit moths, noises in the walls, a character blithely wandering off to the cabin at midnight. The all too familiar explanation of ghosts had me furious at its unoriginality. It felt like every ropey fantasy/sci-fi TV series. Though Muschietti has some tricks up his sleeve – not least a fun line in misdirection – there is too much reliance on traditional ghost-stories.

It’s creepy in parts but caused far too much eye-rolling with its close adherence to the genre tropes. Just not good enough, despite my love for GDT and disturbing children.

Hannah Satan Turner