Muschietti, del Toro and Chastain create the perfect ghost movie with an added conceit

Rating: 10/10 (19 February 2013)

From Guillermo del Toro, the visionary behind CRONOS (1993), MIMIC (1997), BLADE 2 (2002), HELLBOY (2004), and PAN'S LABYRINTH (2006)... and newbie director AndrÃ©s Muschietti, MAMA is an electrifying ghost movie that hits the right spots.
*Warning: descriptionary spoilers.*
The chilling prologue (of how the two very young kids were abandoned by a deranged father, and left to fend for themselves), has the viewer glued frightened to his/her seat, and from the first shot (eerily photographed by Antonio Riestra) down to the shocker ending, the scares relentlessly pile up on one another! The inevitable ghost shows itself layer by layer (initially a dark hole in the wall with moths creeping out freakishly, then an ominous shadow, then an unearthly cackle and a hypnotic lullaby, then a blackened, wizened hand straight out of the HARRY POTTER films, etc.) until the complete apparition displays itself in full (deathly) regalia. While I posted some cases of children being raised by feral animals in my FaceBook wall, MAMA adopts an even trickier and more freakish concept -- and even if I seem to be spoiling the surprise here, you can connect the dots and even predict the plot, although Muschietti and producer del Toro craft the film as if the "ghost" plot and "feral children" subplot should already be obvious to the viewer, and instead concentrate on revving up the scare factor -- full blast. Laudably (for a horror movie), the support characters are well drawn: a determined psychiatrist, a busybody and righteous aunt, the feral children, and even the brief role of the deranged father... while the two leads (Jessica Chastain and Danish actor Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) are cast perfectly (although the handsome Coaster-Waldau, midway through MAMA, spends the rest of the film in the hospital, having survived a close call with the titular specter... remember poor Eric Stoltz in ANACONDA?) Chastain, an actress on a roll (after her starmaking performances in two 2011 film, THE TREE OF LIFE and THE HELP, and her lead role in the recent ZERO DARK THIRTY), is simply tremendous, never hitting a false note as a punker girlfriend reluctantly forced to take care of the two kids and save them from something horrible and unfathomable. Intelligently, the script (by Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Neil Cross) avoids predictability by having Chastain play a punker who is never bitchy or obnoxious, but rather, finds it in her heart to be a surrogate mother to two young kids from the vengeful and covetous claws of the titular specter. The two young kids playing the feral children, Megan Charpentier (as the older Victoria) and Isabel NÃ©lisse (as the younger, deeply traumatized Lily) are incredible. (SPOILER!!!) The scene where (after the children have been missing for 5 years) the children are first encountered in a creepy house is bound to haunt your memory for months to come! Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau, a handsome Danish 43-year-old who looks 20 years younger, offers two uncanny performances: as the deranged father ready to kill his wife and children, and the softhearted brother, Uncle Lucas to the kids. If you were blown over by the panoramic visuals of del Toro's PAN'S LABYRINTH or impressed by the hellish settings of del Toro's HELLBOY, expect a different palette here -- a ghost story with a trick conceit, directed with flair, intelligently performed, hitting all the right spots the way a proper horror movie should!