Mama

Rating: 3/10 (3 July 2013)

I was disappointed when I missed the opportunity to see this film at the cinema, having the terrific scary movies Insidious and Sinister, but I was surprised to see the critics give this a low rating, I was still going to watch it though. Basically investment brokerage senior partner Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) has a mental breakdown and kills his two associates and wife, and then he tries to kill his two daughters, three year old Victoria and one year old Lilly, driving with them through the snow on a winding road. He crashes the car after going off road and off a cliff, but they survive the crash, and they find an empty isolated cabin, and when the father tries to kill his daughter again a creepy ghost attacks him and saves them. Five years pass the children are found by Jeffrey's brother Lucas (also Coaster-Waldau), they have been raised without social relationship with real people, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) claim they have been raised by maternal protective figure Mama. Lucas suggests they should be put in the custody of their grandmother, but instead he himself is chosen by Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) as the one to take care of them, the doctor is studying the girls in regard to their behaviour and former living environment, specifically the claim of Mama. Lucas lives with his girlfriend Annabel (Zero Dark Thirty's Jessica Chastain), she plays in a rock and roll band, the young girls move into their house, and soon enough they bring their delusional and almost animalistic behaviour with them, but also they are not alone. Sisters Victoria and Lilly have also brought with them the supernatural forces of the unknown entity Mama that can shape-shift and cause all sorts of occurrences, chaos and terror happens for them all, of course in the end the bad stuff goes away. Also starring Javier Botet as Mama, David Fox as Burnsie and Dominic Cuzzocrea as Ron. Chastain is, I agree with the critics, a very unconvincing goth punk rocker, black hair or not, so I could not pay much attention to her, to be honest, even with the involvement of Guillermo del Toro, I couldn't pay much attention to anything, only one or two bits were relatively creepy, some of the special effects were okay I guess, but the story was muddled and nonsense, the pace was slow, and overall I just found it pretty boring, a disappointing horror film. Adequate!