25 January 2013
Directed by: Andres Muschietti
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse
What It’s About: A rocker-chick and her boyfriend must take in his feral nieces, who were left alone in a cabin in the woods for five years, while a malevolent entity tries to reclaim the two young girls.
Rated PG-13 (for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements)
Runtime: 100 minutes
By Cole Nelson, Staff Writer
With a trailer that showcases the chilling words of a little girl softly calling out to a mysterious maternal figure, Mama has had horror-film fanatics anticipating its large screen release to satisfy their need for shivering fear. Unfortunately, it only offers the occasional jump-scare and not much else.
Mama contains all the aspects of a cliché demon film: a new house with extensive air vents, a recent death, several moths, a troubled family that has the inability to connect the dots and process time correctly and, of course, the flexibly-freaky demon that haunts them. Mama does not bringing anything new to the table.
The film begins with two young girls, Lilly and Victoria, who have been left alone in an abandoned cabin and isolated from any human contact for five years, making them savage beings. After their father mysteriously disappeared, the “cool uncle” Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), with little to no help or motivation from his dreary rock-and-roll girlfriend (Jessica Chastain), devotes those five years to searching for and eventually finding his barely-human nieces. They are slowly integrated back into a society that is fairly new to them, where they develop into socially capable little girls. But, as one could expect, something is still off about them. The Goth-like Chastain, who plays Annabel in the film, quickly senses that something is wrong, but does little to rid herself of her apprehensions. After recording and analyzing the girl’s actions and reactions, Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) begins to formulate a slight idea about what the ghostly apparition may be. From then on, the story consists of the usual events that transpire in a formula blockbuster horror film with a finale that has the quality and predictability of an M. Night Shyamalan film.
Director Andrés Muschietti did an exceptional job for his first feature-length film. However, for a film that was presented and produced by Guillermo del Toro, director of Pan’s Labyrinth and the Hellboy series, I anticipated something out of the ordinary and impressive, not the mainstream scare that I received.
After sitting through an hour and forty minutes of ordinary adult acting, I must praise the two little girls, Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse, for their precocious acting abilities. Child acting, when done right (as the girls demonstrate) can be a significantly creepy addition to a film. Mama focused strongly on these two actresses’ capabilities; they carried the film on their shoulders and did not let it down. Jessica Chastain on the other hand, an Oscar-nominated actress and star of Zero Dark Thirty, sinks into the mediocrity of Mama portraying the reluctant new bass-guitarist mother figure to these girls.
One scene that did stand out from the rest was a unique dream sequence flashback to colonial times where an insane mother runs from the authorities in order to protect her infant daughter. This scene established a resolution to many of the unexplained occurrences and added slight character development and generated affection towards the “mama” demon, something that isn’t often seen in a horror flick.
Mama does not stand as anything special among its already contemporarily disappointing genre. If anything, it raises the bar for contortionism of a demonic creature to any horror film that follows. I still cannot decide, though, what was scarier: the mama demon or Jessica Chastain’s makeover.
6/10
Courtesy of www.aceshowbiz.com