Standard Occult Film: No Innovations and No Insights

Rating: Null/10 (13 February 2016)

"Mama" was a well-directed film in the thriller/horror style. With Jessica Chastain and the excellent cast, the film was watchable, especially with the interesting camera angles and set-ups of director Andrés Muschietti.
The story focuses on the two young daughters of a businessman, who loses his fortune, goes made, kills his partners and his ex-spouse, then kidnaps the two children. When he drives his car off the road in an isolated mountain area, the man and the children take refuge in a cabin.
It appears as though the father is about to take the lives of his children, but he himself is killed by the supernatural spirit of "Mama," who is the ghost of Edith Brennan, a mental asylum patient from the late 1800s, who escaped from the asylum and killed her child. Her perturbed spirit now takes over the lives of the two little girls and will apparently stop at nothing in killing others to keep them under her control.
While the filmmakers evoked an eerie atmosphere, the film was filled with clichés. "Mama" recycles familiar conventions, such as killing anyone who is a threat. Such bystanders as the curious psychiatrist and the overly possessive aunt are de facto targets of elimination. The film's ending was especially disappointing. SPOILER ALERT FOLLOWS: It was most disappointing that the neediest and most vulnerable child, Lily, is the one who is taken away by Mama in perpetuity. How depressing! While the entire cast performed admirably, the material never rose above a standard cinematic foray into the supernatural.