It was a good attempt and does a lot of things right

Rating: 6/10 (19 January 2013)

I went into this movie without seeing a single trailer, advertisement, or even poster. I had no idea what was going to happen and not hints on the premise so I can say that this is about as truthful as a review can get:
Mama
Now the premise of Mama is a very interesting one. Two girls are abandoned in the woods as children and get nurtured by a strange being simply known as Mama. They are raised in this habitat for years until the uncle of the children finally finds them and takes them back with him. Mama is thought to be a split personality of the eldest girl though this is of course not true. This is an interesting plot in my opinion.
The movie does do some things very well. For the most part; the first 45 minutes of the movie are interesting while not necessarily scary. Definitely a little bit creepy but nothing too creepy. The main characters (thank goodness) are likable. This is probably what saves this movie from being just average is the fact that the main characters are likable. Most horror movies as of late have boring main characters who you wouldn't care if they lived or died but these characters I was actually concerned for. The leading female does a pretty good job overall along with her boyfriend/husband (I'm honestly not quite sure if it ever officially says what their status is). Now let's talk about the scares.
As far as scares go this movie doesn't do too much. The Mama is definitely creepy and of course there are some jump scares but overall she isn't that frightening. Ever good horror fan knows that the less of the monster/ghost/being you see the scarier the movie is. This worked for the first 45 minutes of the movie because you never really got to see her full form. However then the movie falls into the biggest problem of every horror movie: the main threat isn't frightening. I know a lot of people complained about the CGI making Mama not so intense but it didn't bother me too much. Sure it wasn't the greatest but it wasn't as bad as Insidious. What really made it lame was that the movie starts to show what she actually looks like in the open and then the audience starts to realize... oh... that's not so scary... it's just a lady with a HERP DERP face. This movie would've been so much better if Mama hadn't gotten so much screen-time.
Though I will say that the kids were pretty creepy at times. The weirdest thing in this movie is that the kids at the beginning are CGI. Seriously, the kids are simply CGI kids, but then in the next scene they aren't. It's weird and I was curious why they had to do that. However the littlest kid (Lily) is definitely freaky and she actually made this movie a lot creepier than what it would've been. The way she prowls around like an animal put me on edge a couple of times. One small problem that is movie seems to have along with a lot of recent horrors is that there is always a goofy scene that is trying too hard to be scary but ends up being hilarious. Trust me... when you watch this movie you will know what scene I am talking about.
Another slight problem with this movie is that there is a random aunt in the movie that does nothing to affect the plot yet she is supposed to be mildly important. I found this weird because the movie was building up to a conflict with her but it turns out that... well... it wasn't even slightly important to the movie.
The appearance of Mama is rather inconsistent which really bothered me. In the beginning of the movie she appears as more of a "multi-limbed plant monster" where we definitely see her with at least fours arms if not six. But then later in the movie her appearance changes from the one that was already established which seemed like an odd choice since he original appearance was actually really cool. I wish we would've seen a bit more of her original version.
All in all Mama isn't a bad horror but it isn't a really good one either. There are a lot concepts here that I thought were interesting but they just weren't applied right. The movie could've been soooooo much better if it weren't for all of the problems it has. The first 45 minutes are good, but after that it just goes down hill. The finale of the movie isn't scary in the slightest and starts to turn into a certain scene from Harry Potter.
6.5/10