Mama joins the murky rising tide

We're continuing to see a trend in horror that harkens back to revisionist spins on the classic ghost yarn, now that we seem to be out of the J-horror era. One of the latest is Mama, from director-writer Andrés Muschietti, expanded from his short film under the producorial hand of Guillermo del Toro and some screenplay assistance from Luther creator Neil Cross. These newer horror films have been stylistically influenced by films like Ringu (The Ring), but harken back to old school thrillers like The Haunting and The Uninvited. Previous films like The Orphanage and del Toro's own The Devil's Backbone paved the way, and it's only become more pronounced with subsequent films such as The Woman In Black, Don 't Be Afraid of the Dark and The Conjuring.


Spiritual visitations upon childhood are a major del Toro theme, so it makes perfect sense that he'd be a voice behind bringing Mama to a wider audience. The film shares many common elements with The Conuring, but it's also very difficult to talk about without giving too much away. I saw the film knowing next to nothing about the plot, and I'm glad that's the case.

The film involves events of the past, plaguing visitations upon the present. Jessica Chastain (in a change of pace role) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones' Jaime Lannister) play the adults trying to navigate things from a real world perspective, despite the upper hand of those with stronger connections to other realms. Coster-Waldau is particularly good. Yes, I'm being as vague as I possibly can.

If you enjoy these types of horror pictures like I do, and if this trend towards supernatural classicism gives you hope for the genre, then you should definitely give Mama a spin. It's extremely inventive and suspenseful and Muschietti does a great job of tickling the ivories here. I'd be raving a lot more enthusiastically if it weren't for my reactions to the film's final act. Some substantial plot conveniences are taken in the name of hastening the climax along, and I had a pretty strong reaction to the direction the filmmakers leaned to at the very end. But, strong reactions are good - at least it means the creators were taking some chances and following their sense of story. I just wish the outcome hadn't left me feeling so detached from the emotions I'd invested along the way, and so vexed at forces that don't play by the rules we'd been told to believe.