A Haunted House Movie, But With Something I've Never Seen Before

Rating: 6/10 (15 July 2013)

This is a movie by Andrés Muschietti. You've never heard of him because this is his first major motion picture. Yep, basically a first time director. 'Mama' was the most anticipated horror movie from November of 2012 to when it came out, and "The Best Horror Movie of the Year" until April 2013, form a first time director. So, I saw it on opening weekend, and I thought... How could a first time director make such a good horror movie.
There were many scares in this movie that were in the trailers. That's why it was so anticipated... But it was still really good. The beginning was... Odd, but interesting. They also did a good job at having you see the ghost that was in a very good context. It started out with a lot of potential and made a clear path for itself. After the title sequence it got slow, like basically all horror movies do; but it was interesting. There was some creepy with the girls, but it was in a bit of an unexplained context. It's hard to explain. There was good acting, good dialog, and character buildup that worked. Some very creepy and unnerving things happened in coming up scenes that worked well for this movie. Muschietti was doing a really good job at throwing the scares at us.
Coming up, there were many, many creepy moments, especially with the little girls. Some unfortunate things happen to the family, but it happens for a good reason. That also worked in the movie. Coming up there were even more creepy and even scary things that happened. It did turn into a haunted house movie, but several things happened outside of the house, and this wan't done like most haunted house movies. I liked seeing something different in this type of movie. It worked about as well as the cliché haunted house movie horror events and scares, but still, it was new. There were creepy, suspenseful, intense moments that made most of the creepy parts scary. It was good that this movie was able to pull those scares off. There were some jump scares in this part, but it was less about the point that something was jumping out at you. Some of them were the point that little girls don't do that or the point that those things aren't supposed to to happen. The ones that were just jump scares were so big and done so well that it was actually scary, not just a jump scare. I've rarely seen a movie pull that off.
Coming up, the movie gets extremely intense, suspenseful, creepy, and more scary. Odd things happened, big things to the story line happened, and scary things happened. The scares in past parts of the movie had to do with the sounds or the facts that things like that were not supposed to happen or intense, creepy parts. The scares now almost mainly focused on the visuals. There were very scary things that popped on the screen and were done almost perfectly. There were also realistic reactions and very well done written and directed scenes. There were some things that I had never seen before, but some that I had seen before.
I rate everything up to the end 9/10, but the end brought it down to 7/10, because the ending was horrible. Several things that had been scary in recent parts or earlier in the movie in general, stopped being scary, and were just there. It wasn't scary: it was slow, stupid, badly written, and didn't belong with a horror movie. I don't know why the writers decided to do that, and that Andrés Muschietti decided to execute it that way. It also started to make scary things earlier in the movie not seem as scary when you look back on them.
'Mama' was good, scary, and done well. It could have been an 8/10 or 9/10 if the ending was good, but it was not. It did not bother me later at all, but it was still scary. I recommend this movie to anyone who's thinking about seeing it. I bought this movie on Blu-Ray, too. The 7/10 rating means I thought the movie was good.