mama 2013 movie review

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Very few horror movies would last past the second act if the characters in these films were actually fans of horror movies.

Some time after the first occurrence of Scary Old Timey Music Wafting Through the Vents, after Creepy Bugs Fluttering Inside the House and certainly by the time of the "Accidental" Fall That Sidelines a Key Character — well, that's when any red-blooded, movie-going individual would run out the front door and never look back.

To the credit of director Andy Muschietti , his co-writing team and a first-rate cast, "Mama" succeeds in scaring the wits out of us and leaving some lingering, deeply creepy images, despite indulging in many of the aforementioned cliches — and about a half-dozen more. (Executive produced by horror master Guillermo del Toro, "Mama" is a feature-length expansion of a three-minute short that Muschietti made with his sister Barbara.)

In addition to at least three or four jump-in-your-seat stingers, we get some of the most creatively chilling nightmare sequences in recent memory. A stylized dream (which is really a transferred memory) set in the 19th century, in which we see a crazed young woman creating bloody terror before leaping off a cliff with her newborn, all of it shown from the madwoman's point of view? That's a lot more innovative than anything we're likely to see in yet another film about a plodding behemoth in a mask chasing after dumb teenagers through the woods.

In the prologue to "Mama," we learn of a shooting at a financial firm after an economic crash. A distraught executive named Lucas ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from "Game of Thrones") arrives home, quickly collects his two young daughters, Victoria and Lilly, and speeds off. They wind up in an abandoned house deep in the forest, where Lucas apparently intends to shoot his daughters before he can kill himself.

That's not quite how it works out.

Flash forward to five years later. Lucas' brother Jeffrey (also played by Coster-Waldau) has never given up hope. His team of searchers finally stumbles on to the very abandoned house we saw a century ago in the nightmare. Dad's long gone, but the girls are still there — covered in mud, making strange noises, crawling on all fours in rapid fashion like wild animals. How could they have survived on their own?

The girls are kept in isolation for a few months as Dr. Dreyfuss ( Daniel Kash ) records their every move while ostensibly helping with their assimilation. Given that Victoria keeps making cryptic references to an unseen "Mama" and Lilly sleeps under the bed, gnaws on fruit, twigs and the occasional bug, and screams whenever anyone tries to touch her, the girls hardly seem ready for ice cream, pajamas and bedtime stories, but Jeffrey is determined to give them a normal life.

So Jeffrey and his rocker-chick lover, Annabel ( Jessica Chastain in a black wig and a tattoo sleeve), take the girls to their new rent-free home, provided by the ever-lurking Dr. Dreyfuss, who wants only to keep studying the little ones.

Let the chills and spills begin. As Dr. Dreyfuss investigates some long-ago murders at a facility just a few miles from the site of that house in the forest, Jeffrey is sidelined by an "accident," leaving the reluctant Annabel in charge of the girls, who are still a long way from being invited to anyone's play group. (Not that we ever see a hint of even one neighbor on the block. Does no one hear all the shaking, rattling and rolling going on in that house where the rocker chick lives with those scary little girls?)

For the longest time we don't see much of the ghostly Mama, who apparently has been alternately caring for and terrorizing the girls all these years and has made the trip with them to suburbia. She flashes by the screen, or we see just the top of her head as she zips about the house. Once we do see her, yipes. Thanks to a combination of CGI and a performance by the extremely thin, extremely tall Spanish actor Javier Botet, this is one frightful Mama.

The real mother in the story is Annabel, who slowly sheds her tough-talking, who-gives-a-bleep exterior as her nurturing instincts take over. It's worlds away from Chastain's Oscar-nominated turn in " Zero Dark Thirty " and further proof she's one of the finest actors of her generation.

Some elements of "Mama," including the dream sequences, are reminiscent of Japanese horror films. There's also some dark and wicked humor, as when Lilly plays and giggles with an offscreen Mama while Annabel goes about household chores, oblivious to the insanity occurring just around the corner. Coster-Waldau is solid in what turns out to be a supporting role, and Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse are terrific as the little girls.

Movies like "Mama" are thrill rides. We go to be scared and then laugh, scared and then laugh, scared and then shocked. Of course, there's almost always a little plot left over for a sequel.

It's a ride I'd take again.

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Mama (2013)

Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements

100 minutes

Jessica Chastain as Annabel

Megan Charpentier as Victoria

Isabelle Nelisse as Lilly

Daniel Kash as Dr. Dreyfuss

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Lucas/Jeffrey

Directed by

• Andy Muschietti

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Mama – review

T his self-consciously stylish Hispanic horror movie is the feature debut of the Argentinian Andrés Muschietti, who has co-scripted it with his sister Barbara. It's produced, like many such, by the Mexican-born Guillermo del Toro , who has been helping to reintroduce the supernatural into the genre. In a brisk pre-credit sequence a topical note is injected into the stuff of Grimm fairytales by having an American, unhinged by the 2008 financial crisis, kill his wife and then take his little daughters into the wintry Virginian countryside to kill them and take his own life. His aim is mystically frustrated, and several years later the girls, frighteningly feral, are discovered in a remote cabin, claiming to have been reared by some one they call "Mama". They're surrendered into the care of their father's identical twin and his heavy-metal partner (Jessica Chastain), and what follows becomes increasingly arbitrary and explicit. There are plenty of easy shocks, but the things that go bump in the night have little psychological resonance.

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Where Dread Throbs and Little Girls Scuttle

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By Manohla Dargis

• Jan. 17, 2013

Guillermo del Toro, the reigning godfather of motion-picture horror, is the modern-day Val Lewton , the legendary producer of atmospheric chillers like “The Curse of the Cat People.” If you’re a movie fan, you know that horror doesn’t get much better than this, and when it comes to contemporary offerings it rarely gets more enjoyable than “Mama.” Instead of delivering buckets of guts and gore, this ghost story offers a strong sense of time and place, along with the kind of niceties that don’t often figure into horror flicks, notably pictorial beauty, an atmosphere throbbing with dread and actors so good that you don’t want anyone to take an ax to them.

The story opens with a camera sliding up to a car parked at an angle, with the driver’s door open and the radio blaring in front of a suburban house. Catastrophic economic news has led to a panic, with one executive, Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), running amok. Since the fetching Mr. Coster-Waldau plays the blond bad boy Jaime Lannister on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” you may expect the worst. The director Andy Muschietti — who shares script credit with his sister, Barbara (who’s also one of the producers), and a third writer, Neil Cross — whittles the story down to its freaky primal nub. One minute, Jeffrey is holding a gun and contemplating the unthinkable with his two young daughters; the next, the girls are five years older and singing a lullaby straight out of “ Hellraiser .”

The Muschiettis open the movie with “once upon a time,” tipping that “Mama” is a modern fairy tale of sorts. After the girls went missing with their father, their uncle, Lucas (also Mr. Coster-Waldau), initiated a search. Two of his trackers find them in a derelict midcentury-modern home deep in the woods. (Dad remains M.I.A.) It’s a setting that suggests an abandoned Don Draper weekend getaway, save for the two critters scuttling across the floors and atop a fridge, where one hovers over the other like a bird with a chick. Filthy, with matted hair and skinny spider legs, these are the little lost girls, Victoria (Megan Charpentier), and her younger sister, Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), wild children seemingly headed toward an unhappily ever after.

Lucas takes custody of Victoria and Lilly, to the sullen displeasure of his live-in girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). Together they move into a house provided by the hospital where the girls are treated. However appealing its cast, the movie sputters in this stretch, partly because it takes time to recover from the shock of Ms. Chastain’s amusingly apt Goth drag (she only looks menacing), with her jet-black accouterments and multiple tattoos snaking around her pale arms. More problematic are the lapses in logic. The filmmakers easily sweep the girls out of their woodland digs, but they stumble with some of the more ordinary scenes.

“Mama” began as a wittily unnerving three-minute short about two girls and a maternal creature that the Muschiettis shot to show Mr. Muschietti’s range as a director. Mr. del Toro took notice of their pocket shocker, and while he took only an executive producing credit on the feature-length “Mama,” it fits with the more successful movies he’s signed onto. Mr. del Toro understands that nothing says terror like a home that’s become a rattling cage. And so, once Lucas has been awkwardly dispatched, leaving Annabel home alone with the girls, Mr. Muschietti gets down to shivery business.

Ms. Chastain and her excellent child co-stars, an intensely matched set, embody their characters with soulful believability, whether they’re working together or creeping along a hallway solo. Left to their own devices these three initially circle one another warily. Where this reluctant, plausibly uneasy family is headed is obvious, but Mr. Muschietti throws out enough diversions and visual wit to keep you distracted from the predictable turns. In “Mama” horror is intimate, domestic and overtly feminized, so much so that its monster — Javier Botet, from the “(Rec)” Franchise — opens up darkly oozing, Cronenbergian holes in the wall, a striking visual suggesting that the house itself has given birth to the demon. Here the law of the father meets the wounded wrath of the mother.

“Mama” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A consistent sense of dread, topped with some dead.

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'Mama': A Good Old-Fashioned Horror Movie

David Edelstein

Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and her sister, Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), are near-feral orphans in the horror thriller Mama . Universal Pictures hide caption

• Director: Andrés Muschietti
• Genre: Horror
• Running time: 100 minutes

Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements

With: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Daniel Kash

Watch Clips

Credit: Universal Pictures

'I'm Not Your Mom'

I was weaned on horror movies and love them inordinately, but the genre has gone to the dogs — and to the muscle-bound werewolves, hormonal vampires, flesh-eating zombies, machete-wielding psychos, etc. It's also depressing how most modern horror pictures have unhappy nihilist endings in which everyone dies and the demons pop back up, unvanquished — partly because studios think happy endings are too soft, but mostly because they need their monsters for so-called franchises.

But Mama is an entertaining step in the right, which is to say backward, direction. No, it's not original — it doesn't drill for fresh nerves. And the subtext has problems I'll talk about later. But it's a good old-fashioned ghost story, shapely and poetic, beautifully fashioned. And scary — let's not forget scary.

The director is first-timer Andy Muschietti, and the producer is Mexico-born horror maven Guillermo del Toro, who moves back and forth between popcorn genre pictures and surreal fantasies with imperiled child characters, among them Pan's Labyrinth .

Mama hinges on imperiled children, too. Lilly and Victoria are little blond sisters who've spent five years alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods after being kidnapped by their estranged father, who'd just murdered their mother. He doesn't stick around — I won't say why. The girls are finally found by trackers hired by their uncle and, at first, they're barely recognizable as human. They hiss and claw and scamper around on all fours. The younger, Lilly, was barely a toddler when she entered that cabin. Whisked away from it, she keeps calling out, "Mama."

The girls' uncle, Lucas, is played by Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who cut a fine, romantic presence as the villain in last year's terrific Norwegian thriller Headhunters . But it's Lucas' live-in girlfriend, Annabel, who's the protagonist. She's played by rising — risen, really — star Jessica Chastain, her hair cut sharp and dyed raven-black, her eyes rimmed with mascara. You can't take your eyes off her, which is a good thing, because you spend a lot of time following her down dark corridors.

Annabel is a Goth rocker who doesn't want kids — we know this because in her first scene she takes a pregnancy test and breathes a sigh of relief when it's negative. So it's quite the challenge to care for two feral girls at the behest of a hovering therapist who thinks the kids need a stable home. Annabel makes her discomfort plain when the girls are delivered to her and Lucas' new suburban house, supplied by a hospital for occasions like these — you know, the feral-kids-need-a-stable-home occasions.

As unwilling foster parent Annabel, Jessica Chastain is the flesh-and-blood figure at the core of a story about conflicting maternal instincts. Universal Pictures hide caption

As unwilling foster parent Annabel, Jessica Chastain is the flesh-and-blood figure at the core of a story about conflicting maternal instincts.

The movie will ultimately come down to whether Annabel can bond with these girls and, in the process, discover her own maternal instincts — the only effective weapon against the title character. I won't tell you who or what Mama is or where she came from or what she wants — but she's a ghost to conjure with cinema's eeriest, a spidery thing with a face that's a dry-rotted mask of pain and rage.

As in many modern horror films, a lot of Mama 's scares come with fortissimo musical exclamation marks. But others are the result of director Muschietti's witty staging, with sight gags that make you laugh and then gasp, like the shot in which little Lilly is playing tug of war with her off-screen sister, Victoria and — oh, wait. There's Victoria walking down the hall. So who ... ? Oh .

Fernando Velazquez's music is deliciously hammy, evoking nursery rhymes and funeral processions. And there are swirling, swooping, eye-popping expressionist dream sequences — visions, really, telepathically induced by a jealous and very volatile spirit.

The biggest problem is that the central question — whether selfish punk Annabel will find her inner mom and save the girls — is beyond old-fashioned: It's reactionary. But the heart-rending operatic climax sweeps you up in a more complicated question: whether either or both of these little girls will forsake a devoted but demonic psycho Mama for one who might be less constant but won't suck out anyone's innards.

I was guessing right till the end, which is not only satisfying — there's no potential sequel in sight.

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Mama Reviews

Hits most of the expected beats of a ghost story of this nature, though the actual design of the titular character is jarring and evocative enough to stay with you well after the credits roll.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Sep 22, 2023

Following a common trend in supernatural horror, Mama begins with a novel premise and compelling characters, but then slowly digresses into bankrupt genre clichés, rampant exposition, and formulaic boo! moments.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 20, 2022

...a little unnerving when it needs to be and creepy throughout.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 23, 2022

Mama may not be the go-to horror film, but in the season of honoring mothers, it is the perfect film for the horror fanatic.

Full Review | May 6, 2022

While [Guillermo Del Toro] only takes an executive producer credit here on Mama, I doubt more involvement would have been helpful.

Full Review | Jan 14, 2021

Connoisseurs of a more classic thriller/horror vibe will embrace the emotionally resonant and thought-provoking Mama.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.0/4.0 | Sep 15, 2020

Promising pieces and a stylish presentation should be enough to at least recommend "Mama," but the movie never coalesces into anything greater than the sum of its parts.

Full Review | Original Score: C | Jul 18, 2020

The first truly heinous film starring Jessica Chastain.

Full Review | Original Score: 1.2/5 | Nov 19, 2019

What might have been a great twist is wasted. Back to the drawing board for all those involved.

Full Review | Jul 30, 2019

Despite an intriguing premise and a few scenes that work really well, this is one of those horror films that get sillier as they go along.

Full Review | Apr 11, 2019

Never quite feels like the sum of its parts, devolving disappointingly into a nuts 'n' bolts chiller with sparse originality of its own.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Feb 9, 2019

Chastain is certainly the biggest reason to see Mama, but... The young actresses playing the girls can hold their own.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/4 | Dec 18, 2018

One of the few horror films that feels more character-driven and isn't just a monster-of-the-week jump scare fest.

Full Review | Original Score: 8.5/10 | Nov 1, 2018

While Mama is occasionally hamstrung by cliches, it is a stylish and effective ghost story that lives up to its promise, delivering spine-tingling scares.

Full Review | Aug 21, 2018

It will make you shiver with fear, but it might also make you question what passes for "natural" when it comes to motherhood.

Full Review | May 23, 2018

While its finale gestures at something emotional, getting there involves mucho familiar multiplex filler: loud screeches and some pretty silly business involving the girls' sinister way with wax crayons.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Sep 1, 2017

Good acting can't forgive bad effects or narrative choices, and yes, there are a lot of those.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jan 9, 2017

While Del Toro uses fantasy elements to reach deeper into childhood fear (see Pan's Labyrinth), Mama has flashes of terror then sets back to be, at best, routine.

Full Review | May 10, 2016

Clearly suffers from post-production tinkering but offers some decent chills at its best moments.

Full Review | Aug 24, 2015

If horror movies can be regarded for their degree of effort, then here is one of the hardest-working of the recent past.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Oct 26, 2014

A visually polished but overly repetitive chiller about two girls haunted by a ghost with a seriously advanced case of postpartum depression.

By Justin Chang

Justin Chang

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Watch Latin American Music Awards

What’s under the bed? Who’s behind that door? What’s making those vaguely satanic noises? These and other thought-provoking questions are entertained in “ Mama ,” a visually polished but overly repetitive chiller about two girls haunted by a ghost with a seriously advanced case of postpartum depression . Expanded by sibling filmmakers Andy and Barbara Muschietti from their 2008 short, this English-language, Spanish-Canadian co-production bears the influence of exec producer Guillermo del Toro in its graphic supernatural elements and lyrical underpinnings, but ultimately amounts to little more than a stylish exercise assured of a solid opening and a strong ancillary afterlife.

One of the story’s key miscalculations is the way it gives audiences a pretty good glimpse of the titular spook early on, leaving Mama with little to do for the rest of the 109-minute running time besides remind the viewer, ad nauseam, about her extreme clinginess and anger-management issues.

A flying, towering banshee played by 7-foot-tall Spanish thesp Javier Botet (“REC”) under an ugly brown swirl of long hair and tattered rags, Mama looks like a sewer-rat Rapunzel as designed by Edvard Munch. This grief-stricken, child-bereft spirit haunts a lonely cabin in the woods , where, in a bizarre collision between two equally tortured backstories, a deeply distressed father (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has brought his two young daughters in preparation for a grisly murder-suicide. But before Dad can harm the girls, Mama forcefully intervenes.

A full five years pass before the girls are discovered in the cabin — feral, frightened, limited in their language abilities, and prone to skittering about on all fours. After examining the physically healthy but emotionally traumatized 8-year-old Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and 6-year-old Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), a psychiatrist (Daniel Kash) concludes that the girls coped with their half-decade of isolation by creating an imaginary female protector.

But that theory doesn’t account for the ghoulish events that occur when Victoria and Lilly go to live with their musician uncle Lucas (Coster-Waldau again) and his punk-rocker g.f., Annabel (Jessica Chastain) in a picturesque suburban manse. Soon doors are opening and closing by themselves, a disembodied voice is overheard singing lullabies, the walls start to sprout living insects, and Lucas winds up hospitalized after a not-so-accidental fall. Left alone with Victoria and Lilly, Annabel must discover her own latent maternal instincts and ward off Mama’s increasingly anticlimactic tantrums.

Andy Muschietti displays unusual style and confidence for a first-time helmer, and he and producer Barbara Muschietti (both credited for the screenplay with Neil Cross ) have taken pains to render Mama as sympathetic a supernatural terrorist as possible; her respective bonds with the older, better-adjusted Victoria and the younger, more dependent Lilly are cleverly delineated. At times the film seems to be striving for the fantastical feel of del Toro’s “Pan’s Labyrinth,” from the “Once upon a time … ” title card that kicks things off, to the poetic touches in Anastasia Masaro’s literally moth-eaten production design and the cloying orchestral surge of Fernando Velazquez’s score.

But all this feels like elegant fairy-tale shellac on top of an otherwise routine succession of jolts, shocks and fakeouts, the explanations for which will be apparent to the mildly attentive viewer long before they occur to any of the characters. Mama, for all her digital and prosthetic creepiness, is finally a bit of a bore.

Chastain acquits herself well in a scream-queen role made somewhat more distinctive by a butch haircut and sarcastic goth-girl edge, and she wrings maximum feeling from Annabel’s slow-dawning sense of connection with her young charges (effectively portrayed by young Charpentier and Nelisse). Yet in straining so hard to combat the assumption that a woman like Annabel couldn’t possibly be a good mother, the film protests rather too much, coming across as not much more enlightened than the waspy great-aunt (played as a one-note cold fish by Jane Moffat) trying to secure custody of the girls.

The super-slick production is distinguished by Antonio Riestra’s adroit lensing, with its grimy earth tones and sometimes suspenseful framing, particularly in one memorable deep-focus shot that makes shivery use of offscreen space.

Spain-Canada

• Production: A Universal (in U.S.) release presented with Guillermo del Toro of a De Milo/Toma 78 production. Produced by J. Miles Dale, Barbara Muschietti. Executive producer, Guillermo del Toro. Directed by Andy Muschietti. Screenplay, Neil Cross, Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti; story, Andy Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti.
• Crew: Camera (color), Antonio Riestra; editor, Michele Conroy; music, Fernando Velazquez; production designer, Anastasia Masaro; art director, Elis Lam; set decorator, Patti Cuccia; costume designer, Luis Sequeira; sound (Dolby Digital/Datasat/SDDS), Kelly Wright; sound designer, Gabriel Gutierrez; re-recording mixer, Greg Chapman; special effects coordinator, Warren Appleby; visual effects supervisors, Edward J. Taylor IV, Aaron Weintraub, Joan Amer, David Heras; supervising visual effects producer, Dennis Berardi; visual effects producers, Sarah McMurdo, Wilson Cameron, Carlos Puchol; visual effects, Mr. X, Cubica, User T38; stunt coordinator, Jamie Jones; line producer, Ingrid Fernandez de Castro; associate producer, Cristina Lera Gracia; assistant director, Jeff Authors; second unit camera, Miroslaw Baszak, Michael Galbraith; casting, Robin D. Cook. Reviewed at Universal Executive screening room, Universal City, Calif., Jan. 10, 2013. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 109 MIN.
• With: Annabel - Jessica Chastain Lucas/Jeffrey - Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Victoria - Megan Charpentier Lilly - Isabelle Nelisse Dr. Dreyfuss - Daniel Kash Mama - Javier Botet Jean Podolski - Jane Moffat (English dialogue)

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Where to Watch

Jessica Chastain (Annabel) Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Lucas) Megan Charpentier (Victoria) Isabelle Nélisse (Lilly) Daniel Kash (Dr. Dreyfuss) Javier Botet (Mama) Jane Moffat (Jean Podolski) Morgan McGarry (Young Victoria) David Fox (Burnsie) Dominic Cuzzocrea (Ron)

Andy Muschietti

After a young couple take in their two nieces, they suspect that a supernatural spirit named Mama has latched onto their family.

Recommendations

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Summary Annabel and Lucas are faced with the challenge of raising his young nieces that were left alone in the forest for 5 years.... but how alone were they?

Directed By : Andy Muschietti

Written By : Barbara Muschietti, Neil Cross, Andy Muschietti

Where to Watch

Jessica Chastain

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Lucas, jeffrey.

Megan Charpentier

Isabelle nélisse.

Daniel Kash

Dr. dreyfuss.

Javier Botet

Jane moffat, jean podolski, mama (voice), morgan mcgarry, young victoria, dominic cuzzocrea, christopher marren, julia chantrey, ray kahnert, diane gordon, matthew edison, young lilly, sierra dawe, annabel's bandmate, joey proulx.

Hannah Cheesman

Beautiful mama, skinny woman, critic reviews.

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Movie Review: Mama (2013)

• Charlie Juhl
• Movie Reviews
• 7 responses
• --> January 25, 2013

Leaving cryptic messages.

If a horror film’s story is strong enough, then there is no need for it to resort to “cheap scream” techniques to manipulate the audience. A loud, closing door during a quiet period will elicit the same scream as will a figure walking by a window with a sudden, shrieking violin. There is no earthly reason for a piercing violin to sound in the real world, however; the director employs this trick to make the audience jump when his story is not quite up to scratch. Remember two great horror films, “ Jaws ” and “ Pan’s Labyrinth .” Steven Spielberg and Guillermo del Toro respectively used zero gimmicks because these two stories shocked their audiences by themselves without having to rely on shady editing techniques.

Mama , on the other hand, has the shell of a strong story but is severely underwritten. Therefore, director Andrés Muschietti uses most of the tricks in the book to over-compensate. Doors slam unnecessarily, lights decide on their own to flicker and blink revealing a hint of a supernatural presence with the requisite violin shriek, and screams accompany people waking up from dream sequences even though nobody actually screams. Mama , if you haven’t clued in, makes liberal use of those aforementioned “cheap screams” instead of story to illicit its frights.

As for the story, the recent recession causes a man to kill some co-workers and his wife. Escaping town with his two daughters, Victoria and Lily, he stumbles upon a forgotten log cabin deep in the woods where he attempts to kill the girls. An otherworldly thing (soon to be known as “Mama”) is having none of that and takes out the would be killer before he can finish his bloody spree. Who/what is “Mama?” She/it floats, contorts her joints, and makes guttural clicking noises while keeping the girls alive for the next five years until they are found living like feral cats and taken away to go live with their Uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).

Annabel makes it frequently clear she “did not sign up for this.” She plays bass in a rock band, wears way too much eyeliner, and has too many deliberately-placed tears in her tight jeans. She is saddled with taking care of the wild girls by herself quite soon after they move in because Lucas has an unfortunate run-in with the girls’ unsightly “friend” and spends a good chunk of the film in a coma. The girls, eight-year old Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and six-year old Lily (Isabelle Nelisse) occupy different parts of the wild animal spectrum. Victoria remembers how to speak a little bit and interact with other humans at a basic level, but Lily was a one-year old when she was taken to the cabin. She does not speak, sleeps on the floor under the bed, and prefers to walk on all fours like a dog.

Scary, right?

In their new home, “Mama” gets jealous. In between scenes where Annabel hears strange sounds and suspicious thuds, the reasons become clear as more and more of “Mama’s” backstory is revealed. This should be the film’s meat and potatoes and what could have made Mama an almost good movie. If Andrés and his co-writers, Neil Cross and Barbara Muschietti, wrote a scene or two more and strengthened this part of the plot, Mama would have been a so much stronger horror film. As it is, he falls back on spooky sounds, dark lighting, and the occasional maiming/death when someone ventures too close to discovering “Mama’s” secret.

Some folks are confusing Mama as a Guillermo del Toro film; he is only the executive producer and neither wrote nor directed it. He does get top-billing, however, with the title, “Guillermo del Toro presents . . .” That is usually a harbinger of a second-rate genre film (think of the many times you have seen “Quentin Tarantino presents . . .”) If movie posters and credit titles told the truth, it would instead say, “Guillermo del Toro presents a second-rate horror film which he kind of liked but chose not to direct himself because it is not up to his caliber of work.” Guillermo del Toro knew what the audience would see: All tricks, no story and, ultimately, no scares.

Tagged: children , niece , orphan

I like movies and they like me right back. You can find out how much by visiting my personal site Citizen Charlie .

Movie Review: The Gatekeepers (2012) Movie Review: Beautiful Creatures (2013) Movie Review: Warm Bodies (2013) Movie Review: Parker (2013) Movie Review: 5 Broken Cameras (2011) Movie Review: Gangster Squad (2013) Movie Review: Not Fade Away (2012)

'Movie Review: Mama (2013)' have 7 comments

January 25, 2013 @ 2:52 pm frommel

Guillermo del Toro is a hack. Why does his name continue to be used as a selling point?

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January 25, 2013 @ 3:28 pm quazign

The CGI “Mama” is laughable.

January 25, 2013 @ 3:49 pm Cartigan

Use what works, I say. Jump scares are the most effective kind.

January 25, 2013 @ 6:13 pm Whimsey

Ending was handled terribly.

January 25, 2013 @ 7:15 pm roscoe

The kids were kinda creepy. So was the acting. Both definitely moreso than the lame-ass apparition.

January 25, 2013 @ 10:46 pm SkullCop

In his defense he’s been involved with some good movies. This could have been one of them had the melodrama not been caked on so heavily.

January 26, 2013 @ 11:33 am Don

Its easy to find fault in a person’s work but Muschietti can be forgiven for a few of your noted misteps – it his first attempt at writing and directing. None come to mind who delivered a perfect movie their first time behind a camera (99.9% don’t get ever get one right after multiple attempts).

I thought Mama was a strong first outing and am anxiously waiting to see what comes next for Andrés Muschietti.

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Screen Rant

'mama' review, what we do get is about 60 minutes' worth of very good and effective ghost story, made to look less attractive by the 40 minutes of fat hanging off of its middle..

Mama   is the lastest horror movie to carry the prestigious stamp of being "presented by Guillermo del Toro" - following in the tradition of such films as  The Orphanage  (2007) and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (2010). Mama tells the story of Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), two little girls whose tragic family history leaves them stranded in the woods for five years' time.

When their father's twin brother, Lucas ( Game of Thrones  star Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), finally tracks the girls down, it seems like the reunion is a small miracle; although Lucas' punk-rock girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) isn't too thrilled with the sudden shift from starving artist to maternal figure. It doesn't help things when Annabel begins to suspect that the girls may not have been fending for themselves out there in the woods. Some thing watched over them, and is still   watching over them in their new home; an entity the girls only refer to (in secretive whispers) as "Mama."

Typically with these   "del Toro presents" films, the acclaimed filmmaker uses his clout to both support a creepy/frightening tale that caught his macabre attention, while also helping to showcase the work of a freshman feature-film director. Stepping up to bat this time is Andrés Muschietti, the writer/director who made the  2008  Mama  short film that this feature-length version is based on. Muschietti proves himself to be a visual and conceptual talent, and his film is definitely boosted by the talent of Chastain (in her pre-Oscar nom days) and the two young actresses who serve as its stars. However, while the concepts, acting and construction of the film all show hints of great skill, the execution of the storyline is where  Mama  fails to capitalize on its own potential.

In terms of direction,  Mama  is a pretty strong debut for Muschietti. The cinematography is dark but vibrant (full of earthen tones) and the sequences are all visualized and constructed in sharp, creative ways. Most of the film is confined to two locations (the woodland cabin where the girls are found and a house where Lucas, Annabel and the girls are living) but how Muschietti chooses to use these set pieces and the tight space therein is fairly smart and engaging most of the time. Instead of the usual 'calm by day, scary by night' progression, we instead get a lot of clever scare moments executed at all times of day (even broad daylight), using angles and framing to give even mundane moments (like doing laundry) a creepy edge.

Given the choice to use an ever-present antagonist (ghosts tend to lose their mystique the longer they hang around) and two child characters who are more unnerving than dangerous, Muschietti ultimately settles for a film that is consistently creepy, but only seldomly frightening. By the time the film reaches its over-blown conclusion, it has fully shifted from horror story to dark fairytale, and any scare-power it had in store ultimately dissipates into conventional drama. Despite that fizzle at the end, however, much of  Mama is (as stated) pretty creepy.

A lot of that creepiness can be attributed to the young leads, Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse - who play Victoria and Lilly, respectively. As the older of the two, Charpentier has the more difficult task of being the conflicted sister, torn between memories of her past life and her time with "Mama." The part calls for some intense interrogation scenes with psychiatric professor Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) and moments of both menace and childlike vulnerability. For a such young actress, Charpentier holds her end up well enough.

Since Lily spent most of her formative years in the woods, with no memory of life beforehand, Nélisse is given the much more fun task of playing the perennially creepy, snarling, untamed wild-child - a task she most definitely embraces wholeheartedly. Lilly will make you laugh, gross you out - and now and again, freak you out as well.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gets to have a bit of fun in his brief blips of screen time, playing both the half-mad father of the girls and the more sensible twin uncle; after certain developments unfold, he even gets a few moments worthy of a guest spot on House M.D.  That is to say: this is mostly Chastain's show.

It's doubtful that Muschietti and Co. knew that their starlett would be such a big name by the time their movie was finally released, but aside from the extra star-power Chastain brings to the film, her quality acting skills carry a lot of the movie in between the girlie/ghostly scare moments. She's good enough that Annabel's arc from bitter babysitter to fierce lioness protecting her cubs is a solid and relatable through-line that grounds the half-cooked supernatural mythos.

"Half-cooked" is a term that can indeed be applied to much of  Mama 's narrative. The film is frustrating in the fact that the script - by Andrés, his sister Barbara, and   TV scribe Neil Cross (BBC's  Luther ) - has a strong core story (the powerful effects of maternal instinct) and a great mythos built on top of that; solid foundations that the script totally undermines by adding too many extraneous bits.

Instead of focusing on Chastain and the girls,  Mama  in many ways presents us with three major story arcs - Annabel, Lucas and Dr. Dreyfus - only, by the end, one of those arcs has been tied-off abruptly and unsatisfyingly; another is abandoned completely, and the final one (as stated) spins right out of horror into full-on melodrama  - but hey, at least it's completed in full, right? (FUN FACT: If you watch the  Mama  trailer after seeing the film (watch it below) you can actually find out the resolution to part of the story, which didn't actually make it into the theatrical cut.)

At 100 minutes run time, Mama  isn't exactly epic in length - yet it still shows the sort of fatigue and confusion that can often appear when one tries to stretch a short film out to feature length (see also: Shane Acker's 9 ). While short stories allow for the quick introduction and immediate payoff of great core concepts, longer formats of storytelling require a pacing and careful balancing of time and attention that Muschietti just can't quite get right. What we do get is about 60 minutes' worth of very good and effective ghost story, made to look less attractive by the 40 minutes of fat hanging off of its middle. It's regrettable since there is so much that the film does well, but as it stands,  Mama  is just a fairly good time, and would not be a bad call as a future rental.

[poll id="503"]

Mama  is now playing in theaters. It is 100 minutes long and is Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements.

Reviews provided by RottenTomatoes

Mary F. Pols, TIME Magazine : Mama is clumsily written and choppily edited, but Chastain doesn't have a bad scene in it, and you can see why she chose to be in this supernatural ghost story. Read more

Tom Russo, Boston Globe : The frustration ... is how much the movie leans on made-ya-jump scares and contrived plot devices when its quieter chills and already fraught setups are so potent. Read more

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle : "Mama" is skillfully made, and although Chastain is the best thing in it, she's not the only thing in it. Read more

Amy Nicholson, Movieline : Is this Chastain's reputation-besmirching Norbit? Pshaw -- for my money, it's her best performance yet. Read more

Manohla Dargis, New York Times : Instead of delivering buckets of guts and gore, this ghost story offers a strong sense of time and place, along with the kind of niceties that don't often figure into horror flicks ... Read more

Rex Reed, New York Observer : It never hits the high notes of Mr. del Toro's own films or successfully weaves between reality and fantasy as it should. Read more

Joe Morgenstern, Wall Street Journal : "Mama" announces the arrival of a director who works unusually well with actors-the two children are truly scary-and who creates highly charged environments, effective sound designs and powerful fantasy sequences. Read more

Moira MacDonald, Seattle Times : Though "Mama" doesn't work, it has the ghost of a good idea at its core. Read more

Tasha Robinson, AV Club : Plenty of horror movies are willing to settle for making audiences jump. Mama is more ambitious by far: It makes sure viewers are emotionally committed even when they aren't clutching their armrests or covering their eyes. Read more

Bill Goodykoontz, Arizona Republic : The atmosphere is appropriately creepy, and there are some starts, if not outright scares. But it just gets stupid. Read more

Drew Hunt, Chicago Reader : Screenplay contrivances aside, it's as stylish and atmospheric as modern horror gets. Read more

Tom Long, Detroit News : There's something eerily effective about juxtaposing childhood innocence with the violent, the supernatural, the deranged. Evil shines all the more brightly when held up against the sweet promise of youth. Read more

Emily Rome, Entertainment Weekly : Nothing in the movie is quite original, yet Muschietti, expanding his original short, knows how to stage a rip-off with frightening verve. Read more

Stephanie Zacharek, Film.com : This is a picture about how a mother's love can be nourishing at its best but suffocating in the extreme. Chastain embraces that idea wholly, without squeezing the life out of it. Read more

Wesley Morris, Grantland : [The movie] has more integrity than its creepshow peers. The story basically comes down to a dead-looking woman who doesn't want to be a mother fighting for parental custody against a long-dead woman who does. (Grad students, start your theses.) Read more

Todd McCarthy, Hollywood Reporter : In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out. Read more

Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times : The metaphorical mother-child connection becomes a mystical horror show of significant power. Sadly it comes too late to save "Mama." Read more

Rafer Guzman, Newsday : More effective than you might expect. Read more

Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger : It's an interesting effort ... although, sadly, in the end "effort" is really the crucial word. Read more

Ian Buckwalter, NPR : Surprisingly, this patchwork pastiche often works. Read more

Joe Neumaier, New York Daily News : If you're going to have a ghost in your movie, it might be a good thing to present a viable alternative to that ghost. "Mama," however, presents a battle between two not very good options before crumbling like a sheet on a string. Read more

Kyle Smith, New York Post : Chastain has an excellent time. And so did I, for most of the movie: It's much more suspenseful than violent, being careful not to allow us to figure out Mama too quickly. Read more

Steven Rea, Philadelphia Inquirer : Like another del Toro stamp-of-approval Spanish horror entry, The Orphanage, Muschietti's Mama is full of arty tropes - sepia-toned flashbacks, flickering lights, menacing murmurings. Read more

James Berardinelli, ReelViews : It starts out strongly, using evocative visuals and an unsettling backstory to establish a creepy tableau, but it proves unable to sustain those strengths all the way to the finish line. Read more

Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times : "Mama" succeeds in scaring the wits out of us and leaving some lingering, deeply creepy images ... Read more

Peter Travers, Rolling Stone : You know something is up when what looks like a cheapie fright flick is produced by Guillermo Del Toro and boasts an Oscar-nominated actress in Jessica Chastain. Mama doesn't live up to their potential, but the film knows how to creep you out. Read more

Dana Stevens, Slate : Even if the beats are familiar, Muschietti sustains a remarkable mood throughout: wintry, elemental and stark, like a late Sylvia Plath poem. Read more

Kristin Tillotson, Minneapolis Star Tribune : "Mama" is a smartly refreshing departure, a truly scary movie exemplifying horror at its purest. Read more

Kevin C. Johnson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch : [A] respectable entry into the horror genre that values chills over kills. Read more

Adam Nayman, Globe and Mail : The problem is that [the] movie barely meets the minimum generic requirements, and thus comes off as pretentious for presuming to hover so airily above them. Read more

Linda Barnard, Toronto Star : An elegant and edgy thriller, Mamais a ghost story laced with fairytale sensibilities, benefitting from the nightmarish, artful influence of executive producer Guillermo del Toro. Read more

Leah Rozen, TheWrap : The fact that Guillermo del Toro is an executive producer of Mama is a tip-off that this won't be just another horror film with misbehaving and soon-to-be-dismembered teenagers or a drooling, slime-soaked monster. Read more

Nigel Floyd, Time Out : By splitting the action between several different characters and locations, the plot dissipates the suspense and lacks focus, as if it has been bolted together from disparate, ill-fitting pieces. Read more

Keith Uhlich, Time Out : Expertly conjured atmosphere only gets Muschietti so far. Read more

Justin Chang, Variety : What's under the bed? Who's behind that door? What's making those vaguely satanic noises? These and other thought-provoking questions are entertained in Mama, a visually polished but overly repetitive chiller. Read more

Melissa Anderson, Village Voice : Mama never delivers the primal terror its premise would suggest. Read more

David Edelstein, New York Magazine/Vulture : I was guessing right till the bitter, scary, transcendent end. Read more

Michael O'Sullivan, Washington Post : There's something dead and rotting at the center of "Mama," and it isn't the ghost of the woman who lends the horror film its title. Read more

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Uneven movie has very scary scenes, some involving children.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Mama brings up some heavy, complex ideas about mot

The girls' uncle is a selfless character who d

Many very spooky, creepy, and outright scary image

The main character and her boyfriend kiss and star

"F--k" is heard once during a voicemail

Enterprise Rent-a-Car is mentioned by name.

Parents need to know that Mama is a horror movie starring Jessica Chastain and produced by Guillermo Del Toro. It's very light on blood and gore, but there are lots of powerfully scary, spooky images, as well as scenes of young children in danger. Language is light (with one use of "f--k" and…

Positive Messages

Mama brings up some heavy, complex ideas about motherhood, fear, love, devotion, protectiveness, and selflessness. Some of the characters learn to change, opening their hearts and accepting new kinds of relationships.

Positive Role Models

The girls' uncle is a selfless character who doesn't have much money but still wants to take care of his nieces. Annabel learns a great deal over the course of the movie, moving from being a very selfish person to a more giving and caring one.

Violence & Scariness

Many very spooky, creepy, and outright scary images, but very little actual blood. Children appear to be in danger in many scenes, especially a few early ones in which 1- and 3-year-old girls are with their panicked, unhinged father. (They survive a car wreck.) Secondary characters are killed, but only offscreen. A few semi-gory drawings are glimpsed.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

The main character and her boyfriend kiss and start to undress each other, but they're interrupted. No nudity is shown.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

"F--k" is heard once during a voicemail message. "S--t" is said a few times, and "Jesus Christ" is used at least twice as an exclamation. Other words include "hell," "ass," butt," "crap," "oh my God," and "shut up."

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Products & Purchases

Parents need to know.

Parents need to know that Mama is a horror movie starring Jessica Chastain and produced by Guillermo Del Toro . It's very light on blood and gore, but there are lots of powerfully scary, spooky images, as well as scenes of young children in danger. Language is light (with one use of "f--k" and about three uses of "s--t"), and there's one brief scene of adult kissing and sensuality. Mama is a bit more ambitious than other horror films, and many horror-crazy teens will be able and eager to see it. But some of the movie's themes around motherhood and caring for children are a better fit for adult viewers. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

• Parents say (15)
• Kids say (72)

Based on 15 parent reviews

A good movie, it really all depends on the person.

What's the story.

Black-haired, raccoon-eyed rock 'n' roller Annabel ( Jessica Chastain ) lets out a happy "whoop" when she discovers that she's not pregnant. But her boyfriend, Lucas ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau ), is an artist who's spent five years searching for his missing brother and two nieces. And when the nieces -- Victoria ( Megan Charpentier ) and her younger sister, Lily (Isabelle Nelisse) -- are suddenly discovered alive in a cabin in the woods, Annabel and Lucas find that, ready or not, they're now parents. Unfortunately, a creepy ghost known only as "Mama" -- complete with silvery hair, crooked features, and bent limbs -- has been looking after the girls and has no intention of letting them go. Can Annabel discover the ghost's secret before "Mama" gets really mad?

Is It Any Good?

Mama seems to be more about special effects and solving mysteries than about truly exploring fertile -- and spooky -- territory. Producer Guillermo Del Toro 's name in the credits may bring up memories of powerfully scary movies about lost girls ( Pan's Labyrinth ), but MAMA was directed and co-written by Andy Muschietti , a newcomer who adapted his own short film to feature length. Clearly Muschietti has some interesting themes to explore, such as the fact that motherhood is scary and powerful, and he has created two fascinating polar opposites in Annabel and the ghost of "Mama."

Unfortunately, rather than expanding and deepening these themes, the filmmakers fill in the blanks with a bunch of shop-worn old horror routines. Characters can't stop making silly choices, such as visiting the creepy cabin in the woods at night rather than during the day. And a sinister aunt who wishes to take the girls away could have been a much more satisfying addition.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about Mama 's violence . Do horror movies have to be gory to be scary? How did the movie's spooky scenes affect you?

What makes Mama scarier -- or less scary -- than other horror movies ? How much spooky stuff does it show, and how much is hidden?

Do you think the children in the movie appreciate or understand the lengths to which the two "mother" characters care for them and love them? What messages is the movie sending about parenthood?

How does Annabel come to appreciate the role of motherhood? What is she like before that?

Movie Details

• In theaters : January 18, 2013
• On DVD or streaming : May 7, 2013
• Cast : Jessica Chastain , Megan Charpentier , Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
• Director : Andres Muschietti
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : Universal Pictures
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 100 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements
• Last updated : September 17, 2023

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2013 Directed by Andy Muschietti

A Mother's Love is Forever

Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.

Jessica Chastain Nikolaj Coster-Waldau Megan Charpentier Isabelle Nélisse Daniel Kash Melina Matthews Morgan McGarry Javier Botet Jane Moffat David Fox Dominic Cuzzocrea Julia Chantrey Ray Kahnert Christopher Marren Matthew Edison Diane Gordon

Director Director

Andy Muschietti

Producers Producers

J. Miles Dale Bárbara Muschietti

Writers Writers

Andy Muschietti Bárbara Muschietti Neil Cross

Story Story

Andy Muschietti Bárbara Muschietti

Casting Casting

Robin D. Cook

Editor Editor

Michele Conroy

Cinematography Cinematography

Antonio Riestra

Executive Producer Exec. Producer

Guillermo del Toro

Production Design Production Design

Anastasia Masaro

Art Direction Art Direction

Elis Y. Lam

Set Decoration Set Decoration

Patricia Cuccia Kari Measham Andrij Molodecky John 'Butch' Rose

Stunts Stunts

Alison Reid

Composer Composer

Fernando Velázquez

Sound Sound

Greg Chapman Alfredo Díaz Allan Fung Gabriel Gutiérrez Marc Orts

Costume Design Costume Design

Luis Sequeira

Universal Pictures Toma 78 De Milo

Canada Spain USA

Releases by Date

08 jan 2013, 17 jan 2013, 18 jan 2013, 31 jan 2013, 01 feb 2013, 07 feb 2013, 08 feb 2013, 22 feb 2013, 01 mar 2013, 06 mar 2013, 07 mar 2013, 14 mar 2013, 21 mar 2013, 05 apr 2013, 17 apr 2013, 18 apr 2013, 15 may 2013, 29 may 2013, 07 jun 2013, 14 jun 2013, 20 jun 2013, 29 jul 2017, 01 apr 2021, 07 may 2013, 17 jun 2013, 28 aug 2013, 01 oct 2013, 23 mar 2018, releases by country.

• Theatrical M
• Theatrical 14
• Theatrical 15
• Physical DVD & Blu-Ray
• Digital VOD
• Digital Netflix
• Theatrical 16
• Theatrical 15A
• Theatrical B

Netherlands

• Physical 16 Blu ray
• Physical 16 DVD
• TV 16 SBS 9
• Theatrical M/16

Russian Federation

• Theatrical 16+
• Theatrical 12
• Premiere New York
• Theatrical PG-13
• Physical PG-13 DVD

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Popular reviews

Review by Lucy ★★★ 3

GOTH JESSICA CHASTAIN

Review by ellie ✨ ★★ 2

always interesting to see how far into a horror movie i get before having the thought "i'd just kill myself." made it to 38 minutes this time

Review by DirkH ★ 40

I apologize in advance for the swearing and caps lock typing but fuck this film and modern mainstream horror.

Mama represents everything that's wrong with the genre these days. It is bland, uninspired and has no fucking soul whatsoever, which is kind of ironic as it is a ghost story.

Why? Why do ghost stories always have to be played out THE EXACT SAME FUCKING WAY IN EVERY FUCKING FILM???!!!!??? Creepy kids? Check. Creepy house? Check. Kinda sorta expert meddling with shit? Check. COmpletely clueless dimwitted adults who figure out nothing by themselves but just have shit happen to them and happily tag along making all the worst choices imaginable? Check. Predictable backstory with equally predictable resolution? Check.

Review by clementine ★★ 3

i'm built like mama

Review by cat ★★★

the scariest part of this whole movie was jessica chastain’s wig

Review by Dom ★★★½

I liked this. If I was adopted by punky Jessica Chastain, Jaime Lannister and their pet sausage dog I would never complain about anything in my life ever again.

Review by Bethany ★★

i love you jessica!!!! even in your goth days!!!!

Review by Afaf ★★ 2

that was actually...sad

Review by sree ★

mama said it's MY turn to play with the poltergeist

Review by briony ★★½

lesbian custody battles are nasty

Review by matt lynch ★★½

rescued by Chastain's ambivalent motherhood, but man does this go on and on, just forever , and the last 30 minutes or so of chasing around some ridiculously stupid-looking CGI thing is just a catastrophe.

Review by King #adoptdontshop ★★½

Daddy Nicolaj Coster-Walda adopt me!

Mama  is a horror movie about a ghost who took care of lost siblings - and she wants to keep doing so despite being rescued by their uncle and his wife. On paper, this Andy Muschietti film should be terrifying especially since the ghost design is damn scary. This horror drama also features decent performances from the kids and a goth Jessica Chastain. There's gasp-worthy sequences that fully committed to Mama ’s eerie atmosphere and the climax is chilling. Considering the ghost’s purpose  a little heart definitely helped.

But the scares are repetitive and too long in between in such a snail's pace that the spooks quickly ebbed away. Thinking about it, Mama is more maternal drama than horror, and might disappoint fans who want to be consistently scared - a kind of horror that belong to the early 2000s (don’t know why, but it kinda reminded me of The Grudge )

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• January 18, 2013
• Jessica Chastain as Annabel; Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Lucas/Jeffrey; Megan Charpentier as Victoria; Isabelle Nélisse as Lilly; Jane Moffat as Jean Podolski; Daniel Kash as Dr. Dreyfuss

Home Release Date

• May 7, 2013
• Andrés Muschietti

Distributor

• Universal Pictures

Movie Review

Once, years ago, there was a frightened daddy who did bad things. He lost money, hurt friends, killed Mommy, and grabbed his two tiny daughters and ran. But when daddies drive too fast on slippery, icy mountain roads, even scared little girls know that more bad things are bound to happen.

And they do.

The car slides off the road and crashes. And the little ones are left to follow their bleeding daddy as he limps through the snow-covered woods. Luckily they find an old run-down shack in those dark and cold woods. And Daddy starts a fire in the fireplace to keep them warm. But all is still not well.

Daddy cries. And he sits looking at the gun in his hand. And he tells his big girl Victoria to look outside at the snowy trees. And he lifts the gun up to the back of her head.

Then something happens. And Daddy is gone.

Some five years later, a pair of men come upon an old battered cabin in the woods. It’s a crumbling shack that they’re surprised they’ve never seen before. Especially with all the hunting they’ve done near there. But what’s even more surprising is the fact that the shack isn’t empty. It holds two young girls. Two filthy, feral girls who growl and scamper on all fours like overgrown rats.

Once the girls are captured and taken back to civilization, the real odyssey begins. A prominent doctor studies their miraculous case. Their Uncle Lucas steps forward to take them in. But both men have so many questions: How do you actually care for a 10-year-old and a 7-year-old who are more beast than child? How do you reach them? For that matter, how did they possibly survive in those woods for five years?

The girls can’t give many answers. But as they start to reclaim bits of the language they’ve lost, it’s clear that both children believe they’ve had a protector for all that dark time. It’s impossible, of course. There was no evidence of anyone else in that shack. But Victoria and her younger clinging sister, Lilly, have a name they keep invoking, a person they keep calling …

Positive Elements

Mama is an intelligent film with strong statements to make about the life-changing impact of love and parenting.

Neither Lucas nor his live-in girlfriend, Annabel, are absolutely sure about their decision to take the girls in. Annabel is upset that she’ll have to leave her rock band to care for the kids, though she does it anyway. But she definitely doesn’t feel up to the task of being a “mom.” When she thinks Lilly is calling her “Mama,” she quickly says, “Don’t call me that.”

With time we see how even the slightest changes and small displays of affection from the girls start to melt Annabel’s reserve—to the point where she becomes so passionately connected to them that she willingly and doggedly risks death to protect them. Lucas steps out into scary territory to be the girl’s protective father figure. He drags himself out of a hospital bed to rescue them early on.

For the girls’ part, they respond to Lucas (their dad’s twin brother) and Annabel’s affection. Victoria quickly recognizes and embraces Lucas—thinking he’s her father at first. Then with time she tells Annabel she loves her, and moves to protect her from Mama’s jealous rages. Even little Lilly changes somewhat. Annabel finds the girl half-frozen one morning, huddled under a tree in the yard. Annabel runs to grab her, and while the girl at first fights her embrace, she softens at the warmth of Annabel’s breath and loving touch. The overall effect is one that lets the filmmakers explore the fear, jealosy and maternal longing women feel as they find purpose in the the nurturing of children.

Spiritual Elements

In death, the girls’ dad, Jeffrey, comes to his brother in a dream and pleads with him to “save my girls.” That may seem sweet, but as with many ghost stories there’s a dark and very twisted view of the spiritual world on display here. A researcher, for instance, who works with the respected psychologist Dr. Dreyfuss, tells him that “a ghost is an emotion bent out of shape, condemned to repeat itself time and time again until it rights the wrong that has been done.”

It’s that “wrong”—a travesty involving the desiccated, skeletal remains of a baby—that supposedly gives Mama’s spirit the ability to remain in this world and strike with such rage-filled power. She uses a dank spreading rot, populated with black moths, to infect the areas where she resides. She leaps and moves in a series of contorted, twisted and physically impossible ways that deliver their own sense of horror.

[ Spoiler Warning ] We eventually realize Lilly is inextricably linked to Mama when we see her joyfully interact with this darkness and rot, to the point of eating the fluttering moths like candy.

Sexual Content

Annabel wears the formfitting jeans and T-shirt garb of a rock ‘n’ roller. Her shirts and nightwear are sometimes a bit revealing—often exposing cleavage and sometimes her bra. At one point she and Lucas start passionately kissing on their bed. She begins pulling off his shirt but stops at the sight of a shadowy figure in the bedroom doorway.

Violent Content

We rarely see anything grisly or overly bloody. A fatal shooting, for instance, is represented by a few drops of blood on a bedroom floor. But there is a dark and ominous sense of death hanging in the cinematic air. A dream/vision sequence reveals a nun being stabbed with a knitting needle. Rotting decay spreads over her chest and face. A crazed woman grabs a small baby and leaps off a high cliff in that dream as well. We see two men have their necks viciously snapped in the shadows. Another has sharp talon-like fingers driven into his chest. A dead body floating facedown in a lake bursts open, spewing hundreds of moths.

When the girls are first rescued from the wild, they’re both covered in scrapes and bruises. Lucas is sent sprawling over an upstairs railing, and we see him violently thump down the steps, smashing his head along the way and landing bloodied on the floor below. Mama attacks the girls’ Aunt Jean, taking possession of her body. We later see the woman awkwardly moving—as if her internal skeletal structure was snapping and dislocated. She then crumbles over in a pile of loose flesh and bone.

Jeffrey’s car flies over a snowy hill and crashes into the trees below. We hear a radio report that he shot and killed two business associates. After a particularly ugly dream of a screaming and clawing Mama, Annabel wakes with a large bruise on the back of her neck. Later, while fully awake, Mama attacks her, driving her to the floor and seemingly sucking life out of her. Later still, Mama buffets Annabel and repeatedly pushes her face to the ground as the young woman reaches to rescue the girls.

As mentioned, Jeffery puts a gun to the back of his daughter’s head. [ Spoiler Warning ] Lilly is ultimately wrapped up in Mama’s dark cloak-like form and dropped off a high cliff to her death—they both burst into billows of moths when they hit.

Crude or Profane Language

One f-word, a handful of s-words and several abuses of God’s and Jesus’ names. Two or three uses each of “h-ll,” “d‑‑n,” “a‑‑” and “b‑‑ch” round out the coarse language.

Drug and Alcohol Content

Annabel drinks a beer with one of her bandmates.

Other Negative Elements

In an attempt to find out what’s been going on between Dr. Dreyfuss and the girls, Annabel slips into his office and steals a box full of recordings and files. A seemingly always-bruised Lilly plays with and eats bugs and filth.

In today’s age of torture-porn, chain saw slashers and single-camera  Paranormal creepers, it would be understandable if you heard the words horror flick and immediately imagined a gory blood-gush or a low-tech, shaking-camera jump-fest. But producer Guillermo del Toro (who directed  Pan’s Labyrinth and the  Hellboy movies) and new director Andrés Muschietti have crafted something a bit different.

This is more of a glossy “crawl on the ceiling” ghost story mixed with a richly nuanced Grimm’s fairy tale. It has well-developed characters you care for, innocent children you fear for, a semi-happy ending you hope for and an incredibly creepy monster you love to loathe … and kind of understand at the same time. It’s a film that surprisingly underscores the importance of self-sacrificial caregiving and the transforming power of a kind soul. It layers on lessons in what should happen to a grown-up’s heart when children need them. It even promotes adoption in its own scary way. It’s both emotional and effectively pulse-raising.

Mama is also a pic that basks in its own ridiculous premise and proudly parades a fiendishly twisted spirituality. It relishes every raw-throated scream and black talon-handed neck snap. It yelps its coarse language, gobbles up innocence and skitters around your tiptoeing mind with feral intensity.

And those moments of dramatic grace and storybook elegance sometimes get lost in a deep, dark, cinematic wood.

After spending more than two decades touring, directing, writing and producing for Christian theater and radio (most recently for Adventures in Odyssey, which he still contributes to), Bob joined the Plugged In staff to help us focus more heavily on video games. He is also one of our primary movie reviewers.

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Review: Mama (2013)

Mama (2013).

Directed by: Andrés Muschietti

Premise: A pair of sisters is found living in a secluded cabin five years after they went missing. The girls are taken in by their aunt and uncle (Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) but something supernatural follows the girls to their new home.

What Works: Mama is an effective ghost story and one of the better entries in the recent trend of horror films about domestic hauntings. This is the debut feature for director Andrés Muschietti and the filmmaker shows considerable talent. The movie has a very creepy atmosphere and Muschietti and his crew make a lot of interesting filmmaking choices. Lighting is used very well and the action is cleverly choreographed. In several sequences the main characters are placed in the foreground while threats creep up in the background. Mama often recalls the work of Roman Polanski, namely Rosemary’s Baby , with scenes that are staged so that the action is only partially revealed, peaking the viewer’s curiousity and imagination. Mama is also a generally smart and well-acted film, as the movie is about more than just the haunting, and the characters are well written and acted. Often in movies like this an old wrong has to be corrected, making the story a dramatization of redemption. Mama follows this familiar formula but it does that formula very well and then breaks out of it in the ending. This is bold on the part of the filmmakers. The appeal of formula is its familiarity. By subverting the audience’s expectations, the filmmakers challenge how viewers think about issues like sin and redemption and they avoid easy resolutions. This element of the movie works in large part because of the performances by the central cast. Jessica Chastain plays the aunt who has been unwittingly roped into guardianship of these girls and the script provides the actress with moments in which she wrestles with her newfound responsibilities. The development of her character from a reluctant custodian to a devoted parent is convincingly done. Also key to this film are the performances by the girls, played by Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse. These young actors do a fine job; their characters are presented as survivors of a traumatic experience and they are entirely convincing in that role. The rapport that they develop with Jessica Chastain’s character has a lot of reality to it and that grounds the fantastic elements of the story in something familiar. 

What Doesn’t: The appeal of Mama may be somewhat problematic for different audiences. This is a PG-13 horror film, so hardcore horror viewers may find it unsatisfying. This movie does not have the shocks or the gross out moments that this audience usually enjoys. Mama is successfully creepy but the movie lacks jump scares. Expectation without a payoff can be trying and the movie’s pace gets very languid in the middle as a result of a lack of focus. Supporting characters and subplots are introduced but they never come to a meaningful resolution. Mama may also be frustrating for general audiences, especially in its ending. To the filmmaker’s credit, Mama sidesteps a predictable or formulaic resolution and the ending is the right one for the movie. However, because the ending is challenging it is not necessarily a crowd pleaser.

Bottom Line: Mama is an entertaining ghost story. The movie isn’t quite as tight as it ought to be but Mama succeeds because it is so craftily made and because of the filmmaker’s willingness to take storytelling risks.

Episode: #426 (February 10, 2013)

Discovering good movies, one bad movie at a time

Mama (2013)

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