Rating of
2.5/4
Review: Mama
MikePA - wrote on 01/20/13
I had mixed expectations for Mama after watching the first couple of trailers. Part of me thought it looked really, really stupid, while the other part thought it could be kind of cool. Weird opinion, yes. The outcome is a film that is not remotely bad, but flawed and ultimately forgettable. It's a fine, perfectly decent little ghost story, occasionally pretty frightening but lacks the slow build-up of tension it may have needed. The solid performance by Jessica Chastain (who, by the way, looks damn hot with short black hair) keeps you engaged throughout most of the film's duration, providing you with a strong female character whose never unlikable.
Director Andres Muschietti gives the film a terrific visual look and some creative cinematography. There is one sequence in particular in which he combines the living and the dead in a tug-of-war match in one beautiful shot. It's a very inventive sequence, with killer foreplay and a hilarious outcome. He fills the movie with beautiful scenery, but not a lot of compelling storytelling that'll make the film totally worth seeing. It's definitely a horror film that is more style-over-substance.
As for Mama, she's fairly interesting. She's scary when we only see glimpses of her, but once she is shown fully towards the end of the film, she looks sorta goofy. When the anticlimactic finale tries to invoke a sense of humanity in her character, it's pretty laughable.
Mama is nothing near a disaster nor is it a terrifically good horror film. I couldn't help but feel a little disappointed knowing Guillermo del Toro was behind most of it. It's a beautiful sight, no doubt, and there are some pretty effective scares, but you'll leave thinking nothing more then, "meh." It's passable for its share of good scares and Chastain's performance, but I say you wait for DVD. Hopefully del Toro's Transformers 4 thing will show that he's still got greatness in him.
2.5/4
Recent Comments
Robyn - wrote on 03/02/13 at 12:30 PM CT
Mama Review comment
"Mama" succeeds in generating some genuine scares and leaving some lingering, creepy images--despite indulging into numerous cliches. It's a well-made horror film that actually contains a story, and delivers the chills and thrills with a solid cast to gloss over the expected bag of tricks. It also tremendously helps to have Guillermo del Toro as an Executive Producer. In the prologue to "Mama," we learn of a shooting at a financial firm after an economic crash. A distraught executive named …
Krista - wrote on 01/25/13 at 02:59 PM CT
Mama Review comment
How do you watch movies on here i just cant quite figure it out
Chris Kavan - wrote on 01/20/13 at 07:56 PM CT
Mama Review comment
Definitely a rental then - still, with a sever lack of decent horror films, even something that's average is most likely better than most of the dreck out there.
