Conventional ghost story with some stylistic flourishes

Rating: 5/10 (26 June 2013)

A young man (Nicholas Coaster-Waldau), distraught at the 2008 economic collapse, guns down his ex-wife and kidnaps his two young daughters, dragging them to a deserted cabin in the woods, planning to kill them and himself in a horrendous murder/suicide. But before he can enact that horror, he is dispatched by some strange, supernatural force residing in the house. Flash-forward five years when the girls are finally discovered by the killer's twin brother and brought back to civilization, having been "raised" by whoever or whatever it is that resides in the place. Needless to say, the girls are a mess psychologically, but that's only half the problem that the uncle and his girlfriend (Jessica Chastain) face in trying to re-acclimate the children to life in the real world.
"Mama" is a horror movie with a lot of elaborate bells-and-whistles but not a great deal of originality or insight. For beneath all the fancy genre trappings - the creaking boards, the creepy voices on the soundtrack, the half-glimpsed figures in the background, the high-tech CGI effects - it's still just the same old hooey about the spirit who simply can't rest until some personal injustice from the past has been rectified and who believes that scaring the bejeezus out of the living will somehow bring that outcome about.
Yet, despite a really dopey finale, the scare tactics work reasonably well for most of the duration, and the movie succeeds in developing and sustaining a creepy atmosphere thanks to the direction of Andy Muschietti and the cinematography of Antonio Riestra. And Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse are very good indeed as the haunted youngsters.