Top-Shelf Craftsmanship, But Cookie-Cutter Story

Rating: 5/10 (12 September 2016)

Okay, so some guy goes nuts and shoots his wife. He takes his two daughters out to an abandoned cabin and is about to kill them, too, but is then stopped by a ghost who happens to be at the cabin. Great... Okay, so it was a ghost who was maybe unjustly murdered in a similar way. I can buy that.
But then, even after paying some guys to look all over the place for his body, the guy's brother only finds this cabin (and the girls, who are still there) -- five years later. Really? It took you all that time? Okay, fine, whatever. So the girls are feral and apparently have been helped along by this mysterious, vengeful spirit which they call "Mama."
The guy's brother, and his weird over-the-hill Goth girlfriend, agree to look after the children as they are rehabilitated with the help of a psychologist. Unfortunately, this spirit follows them.
Cue faux-creepy dream sequences, jump scares, and the psychologist slowly uncovering the truth that The Supernatural Is Real.
Turns out "Mama" is the ghost of some violently crazy lady in the nineteenth century who died while drowning a baby she stole from a local church. There is a dream sequence showing this which is genuinely disturbing, although in a disgusting snuff-film kind of way.
"Mama," predictably, wreaks havoc on everyone involved, including killing several people with more ease than a trained assassin. Call me a parapsychology nerd, but human ghosts generally do not have this kind of power. "Mama" slinks around and offs victims like a multi-dimensional Green Beret. This just makes it silly to me.
The ending was just confusing. It's funny, everything about this movie was perfect except for the story. The acting, the photography, the music, and the editing was all incredibly seamless. But the story was bland and cookie-cutter, just another forgettable horror flick.