Mama Review

       Horror seems to be moving into a very atmospheric, gore-less direction. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where it started, but you can go back to 1999, with the release of The Blair Witch Project. Blair Witch was released before gore exploitation/torture-porn became a thing again and it led to the glut of cheap, lazy found footage movies that is proving time and time again to not work. But you could argue that a film like this convinced Hollywood not every film had to be filled with gore to get both a lot of money and critical support. Really, the gothic, gore less style in America started 2 years later with "The Others" and "Session 9". In 2004, when "Saw" was released and out of the floodgates came "Hostel", more "Saw", and Oh, so many remakes, it seemed gore-less horror took a backseat. But recently, it has come back. Even the original creator of "Saw", (James Wan), is making such films, like the cult hit "Insidious".
      People are getting tired of gore, and one of the people that's benefiting greatly from this is Guillermo Del Toro. (I'm done with that film lesson now, by the way). Toro has been the producer behind a fair amount of atmospheric, strange horror recently, like today's outing, "Mama".
(WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD)

Isabelle and Megan walking the fine line between creepy
and silly

      Before the credits, the movie starts with a fantastic introduction. It is a basic explanation of the young girls' story and how they became raised by Mama. Their dad murders his wife, evident by some blood and the way he acts. He starts driving the two girls away, but crashes. They run through the forest, and find a cabin. While there, the dad takes one of his daughters into another room and almost shoots her before he is taken away by a mysterious creature. It's a cold opening that starts with subtle mentions toward murder, enough to be shocking. Then it ends with potential murder and an actual murder. The whole intro is slick, involving, and tastefully executed while still portraying a sense of dread.
      The movie continues with the girls' uncle finding the two in an abandoned cabin. When he and his girlfriend adopt them, they try to get them back to a normal state of psychosis with the help of a doctor. They notice both girls talk about a creature that supposedly took care of them in the forest those years they called "Mama". The doctor dismisses it as hallucinations, but slowly, strange things begin happening around the house where the family lives.
      This movie is kind of forgettable. Almost everything about it is good and entertaining, but it doesn't stay with you for long after. There are elements of this film, though, that I think are really well done.
      For instance, the two girls, played by Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse. The two are much more complex and ,well, child-like, then they needed to be. After they're found in a dilapidated cabin, walking around like spiders and covered in dirt, you think they're just going to be there for the sake of "scary kids be scary, yo!", like the twins in The Shining or Regan from "The Exorcist". Soon, the two start having interesting conversations about staying with the mysterious "Mama", and they both act in ways that actually give them an arc. This is especially relevant with how they treat their adoptive parents, mostly the new mom, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). In the beginning, their pretty cold to their adoptive parents, even abusive. Over time, they both get closer, each to varying degrees. This adds some sort of emotional stake to the story. I greatly appreciated this, but I also wish it was more front and center. The two girls that played the characters are fantastic actors too, being forced into situations where they have to cry, scream, and eat moths or pull each other's hair and still make it not laughable, and it works.

Some decent effects at the full reveal of "Mama"

      Everything else, from a technical aspect, is fairly spot on. There's great moments of  cinematography that look fantastic and are very disturbing. Take for instance a nightmare sequence that appears about halfway through the movie. The purpose of it is to display the backstory of Mama. Why the way she is, what caused her to be that way, etc. Like the opening to the film, this scene presents necessary information that answers questions and creates a more solid story while also containing disturbing images and being interesting to look at. There are a few other scenes and moments with a really brilliant use of cinematography, including a strange scene of tug-a-war.
      But while there are many great artistic choices, and the performances range from considerable to exceptional, that cannot help a laughable final act. To be fair, the movie doesn't fall apart with the full out reveal of Mama. It's a little weaker then when we only saw her for split seconds like the rest of the movie, but it's not campy, yet.

One of the better scares from the movie,
involving flash photography.

      The movie falls apart with the extraneous aunt character, played by Jane Moffat. In act two, the girl's aunt plays in in small ways, and almost gives the movie an actual conflict, but is killed off before that could fully come to be. Sometime after the uncle adopts the two girls, they go to court against the girls' aunt, who says the uncle is not to fit to raise children, but the judge grants custody to the uncle anyways. Later on, she comes to the house and thinks the parents are abusive, so decides to sneak into the house and get pictures to turn them in, when she's killed by Mama. And that's it. You could take out her character entirely and lose nothing save a plot cul-de-sac that goes nowhere anyways. By that point, the reveal of the now dead aunt has laughable effects and lines.
      Then the movie goes full Tim Burton on us. There was some original, vivid cinematography before that point, but now, it fully changes. Basically, Mama is standing on the top of a cliff with the two girls, about to jump off. But the cliff is so perfectly framed and gothic-ish and everything looks blue... it's weird. But that's not the bad part, not entirely. Mama overstaying it's welcome is the problem. The whole climax is just a back and forth of the two girls, going between the parents and Mama just keeps going, and going, and going. So now you just want the movie to end!
     The last minute or so of the film is another issue entirely. I have mixed feelings about it. One girl, the smaller one, decides to jump off the cliff with Mama, while the other stays with the parents. I really like this twist, where in most other hands the two would just be grouped together and would either jump off and stay behind, it's interesting to see the movie go halfway, and this ending was foreshadowed from conversations earlier in the film between the two girls. But then the movie chickens out at the last second and has the girl and Mama turn into moths... but by that point the movie's over and you don't care about how out-of-left-field and awful that is.
     All in all, it's a pretty solid entry into PG-13 horror, with great character development, acting, and a true sense of dread behind it's scares, even if it's not terribly memorable. But that final act is a major blow to an otherwise great film.
                                                         
                                3.5/5