An impressive debut by Andres Muschietti. It's a spooky and intelligent horror film.

Rating: 6/10 (31 January 2013)

Mama is the best horror film I've seen in a while. It works thanks to the efforts of director and ambitious newcomer Andres Muschietti. Another reason why the film works is because it was produced by the visionary Guillermo del Toro. Barbara Muschietti, the director's sister, was also a producer. The scares here are a product of the mother's attachment to the children, and this theme works well in the context of the film. The mother in question is certainly a frightening creation. While there are jump scares the majority of the horror involves tension and mystery. This makes Mama seem similar to Gore Verbinski's The Ring (2002). The cinematography of The Ring is dominated by the colors blue and green. Antonio Riestra's beautiful cinematography for Mama is dominated by brown and black. All this makes the film an interesting chiller, and I enjoyed the atmosphere as much as I enjoyed the story. In the end though it's not easy to feel sympathy for the mother. Some scenes show to the audience that she's a sympathetic character, but she's still too scary and her acts too gruesome to make her really sympathetic. Another quirk is that the acting isn't always suitable, so even critics' darling Jessica Chastain doesn't always deliver with Muschietti's direction. One of the influences on Mama was obviously the Japanese horror genre. The best releases from that genre ended before the mid-2000s, but Mama shows that elements from it can still be effective. All in all it's an engaging horror film, and I recommend seeing it.