By "serviceable" I mean mediocre

Rating: 4/10 (8 May 2013)

Mama is like a walk down memory lane, but when I say "walk," I employ the word more like a trudge and by "memory lane" I mean the lane of rehashed ideas. Certainly a gifted performance by Jessica Chastain, one of the strongest female character actors working today, and some delightful atmospheric shots buoy it to a more watchable level, but this is a basic tutorial suspense filmmaking in 2013. And by "basic tutorial" I mean Cliff Notes.
I suppose for the least-demanding, Mama works as a completely serviceable diversion from life's tribulations. We begin by seeing a distraught man named Jeffrey, who, in the wake of losing nearly everything in the bitter financial crisis of 2007, kills his business partners, kills his wife, and then takes his two small children (a three year old and a one year old) out to a remote cabin to kill them too.
They survive a crash after Jeffrey drives recklessly on a road covered with snow, and proceed to take shelter in a rundown cabin. Just as Jeffrey is about to pull the gun on the children when a demonic figure attacks him and kills him almost instantly. Five years later, they are found by Lucas (Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau), Jeffrey's brother and his wife Annabel (Jessica Chastain), his wife. Both children are severely ill, savage, and appear to be haunted by a figure they call "mama." Annabel agrees to take them in and try to give them a safe, viable haven, but as we all know, these children are seriously not right and they rightfully belong in a private institution. But don't worry; she's got this.
It's no wonder why Mama is January-fare; it is practically a poster-child for why the horror genre is such a disappointing venture today. Everything is inclusive here from creepy children, to eerily offputting home, to brave woman at the center, to foreseeable jump scares that have continued to not pose much of an effect on me. There comes a time when techniques tread from seriousness to self-parody and all of those techniques have well walked past the boundaries of self-parody and are almost entering the territory of being laughable.
Chastain is a terrific woman, who has already made herself marketable, being featured in projects from The Help to Zero Dark Thirty. Here, she is simply left with not much to do, and all we get is a blank character with an attractive Goth look and a big enough heart to allow two unhealthy children in her home. The other characters we get are pretty archetypal; either victims or redundant creepy caricatures. The two little girls, while seemingly decent young talents, scared me about as much as your average Scooby-Doo episode.
Mama benefits from Andy Muschietti's smooth, conservative camera-work that takes something of a less-is-more approach to the material, before quickly abandoning it in the later acts and some interesting musical choices to alleviate the environment and surroundings. Yet it includes many clichés that simply can not go overlooked, even when the aesthetic material is above average. And by "includes" I mean "is plagued by."
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse, and Daniel Kash. Directed by: Andy Muschietti.