Great horror to start 2013 (Spoiler Alert!!!)

Rating: 8/10 (27 January 2013)

Mama starts out as your usual horror movie. A cabinet, a dark shadow, and mystery.
But as the movie progress, viewers starts to see character development. First and foremost, the girls gradually starts to adapt back into our world. Then Annabell, who wanted noting to do with kids, slowly starts to form a relationship with the two kids, Victoria and Lilly.
Annabell starts to care for them, and it really shows - which is nice for a horror movie. For a brief moment, Mama showed that it was different compared to other horror movies. Characters in Mama actually changed and evolve, which is so darn refreshing for a horror movie.
Towards the end, I'll admit, it wasn't so much as scary, but more of a sci-fi feel. But that's okay for me, as it just helps the story move from point A to point B. Ultimately, I can see why they changed the pacing of the movie. It resolved the story and to me, felt complete, even though it was a tragic ending. Its honestly better than a ghost popping up in the end, extracting vengeance like most horror movies does so cheaply and then ending the movie in a big cliff hanger (like The Women in Black - although good movie, a clichÃ© ending that just about every horror-ghost movie has).
Granted, while I believe this movie was really good, it however was not perfect. There were scenes and moments in the movie where I just did not agree with. For instance, the scene were Dr. Dreyfuss entered the cabinet by himself was a useless scene. We all knew he was going to die, so why dragged on his death? Actually, his death was quit mealiness - which serve no purpose other than knowing that Mama is a violent ghost, but we all knew that from the very beginning.
Then there was the scene where Uncle Lucas leaves the hospital and into the woods. That scene felt incomplete, or its as if they edited a scene out. And if they didn't, then it obviously serves no purpose as Lucas did not learn anything when traveling to the woods other than meeting up with Annabell later. And yes, I know, his dead brother told him to go there, but again, he learned noting. To me, it just felt like an extra scene to prolong the movie. They could of made better use of that character and scene.
Regardless, even with a couple of disagreeable scenes, I still think this movie was really good. The story overall is noting new by any stretch of the imagination, but sometimes, we do not need a new super complex story. We just need something slightly different but done in a better way.
Overall, I was highly pleased with this movie and a great start to 2013 horror genre.