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 Mama
is the second PG-13-rated horror movie produced by the remarkable
filmmaker, Guillermo Del Toro. Del Toro, who knows a thing or three
about what’s scary, presented 2010’s
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, an
effective remake of the 1970s made-for-TV creepfest. That film centered
around a little girl as its protagonist, waging a war against things
that go bump in the night. With Mama, our two heroines are again small
girls, but instead of running from those nocturnal frights, they welcome
them with open arms.
Daddy’s lost his mind. A psychotic breakdown sees the end of the happy
life of Victoria and Lilly as they knew it. Victoria is a bespectacled
grade-schooler and baby sister Lilly, a mere toddler. Trusting in their
father even as his flight from a murderous rampage results in a car
crash that strands them in snowy woods; a deserted cabin provides a
safety and shelter neither child could expect. A mist, a shadow, a will
o’ the wisp travels through the house and saves the children from their
parent’s desperate act. The sisters are lost and alone, but find help
from that kindly spectre. While they make a home of sorts in the cabin,
living on the cherries and other offerings of the forest provided by
their caring host, their uncle Lucas, a ringer for his lost brother, has
never given up the search for his family. Luckily, neither had some of
the local townsfolk who spot the cabin and find the two small, filthy
creatures that vaguely resemble the missing sisters inside. Victoria
and Lilly’s long-awaited homecoming is not without complications. The
siblings are more like animals - snarling, feral and frightened - than
little girls. Victoria has the benefit of some memories of civilisation
and language, but Lilly who was barely out of infancy when they were
lost is almost completely disconnected from human behaviour. She prefers
to crawl on all fours and sleep on the floor, preferably under her
sister’s bed, surrounded by loose branches and leaves. Still Lucas
won’t give up on his nieces and brings them into the home he shares with
Annabel, his tattoo-covered, bemused but steadfast girlfriend. What the
family doesn’t know is that when the girls came out of the forest, they
didn’t come alone; nor is their unseen new houseguest about to abandon
her beloved charges.
I’m
sensing a theme. In another Del Toro-produced scarer,
El Orfanato, the
protagonist was a woman who was raised in an orphanage and grew up to
endure the mysterious loss of her own child. In
Don’t Be Afraid of the
Dark, our wee heroine is dumped by her uncaring biological mother and
forms a bond with her father’s girlfriend; the only person who believes
her stories of dangerous, teeth-stealing little people. Here, as in
that film, the male parent is sidelined and his significant other
reluctantly yet wholeheartedly takes on the role of mommy. It’s lovely
sentiment, but in Mama we’re faced with a battle of the moms as the
girls’ initial adoptive parent, an embittered spirit who lost her own
child over a century before doesn’t take well to her new babies’ growing
affection for their flesh and blood caretakers. Entering the house
through cracks in the windows and walls, the ghost, called “Mama” by the
girls, keeps an eye on her charges and comforts them as they become
accustomed to their new surroundings, continuing to play with and lead
the children on outdoor jaunts.
The situation around the house is
already skittish with the feral kids jumping out of corners and silently
crawling across floors when the grown-ups sense an extra presence moving
around. One parent’s discovery of Mama leads to a painful result while
the other must single-handedly face the shape-shifting spectre that
won’t be happy until she owns the girls, body and soul. “Mama” herself
is a smoky-black CGI creation whose various shape-shifts can be
alternately creepy as she morphs into the walls and floorboards as a
tentacled fiend, or ridiculous, as when it’s just her mop of long black
hair chasing Annabel across the living room like something out of the
gag reel from the Japanese horror film, The Ring. At her fiercest,
Mama’s strange face resembles a female version of Edvard Munch’s The
Scream, or like a Modigliani when being gentle with the girls. Mama
never looks all that real, which takes away some of the threat. Most of
the movie’s frights are of the pop-up variety, with the occasional need
to yell “don’t look in the closet” at the screen.
Director Andres Muschietti creates a great bleak atmosphere, full of wintery grays and
whites and the monochromes of the dueling mothers, with the
charcoal-coloured ghost doing battle against Jessica Chastain in a
brunette boy-cropped wig and all black wardrobe. Young Lilly is played
by the wide-eyed Isabelle Nélisse, who scoots around on all fours with
unnerving ease more like a monkey than kindergartener. Watching her
poke her head out of various hiding places like a skittish squirrel and
growl like a rabid puppy, she sells the feral kid act terrifically and
is great fun to watch. As with
Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, the males
in the film are basically useless, which is a drag as our ersatz father
figure is played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, a.k.a. Game of Thrones’ Jamie
Lannister. It’s weird to see him in one romantic scene, macking on
someone who doesn’t remotely look like his sister. The ladies are made
to fight it out for the fate of the girls and it’s only by appealing to
the instincts that haven’t changed throughout the ghost’s unfortunate
existence that the sisters have any chance to survive. Or not. One
might have to think poetically about the movie’s ending to appreciate
it; it’s just odd and might’ve come across better on paper than watching
in unfold on film.
Weird resolution aside, Mama isn’t groundbreaking or
particularly memorable, but as January horror releases go, it’s
entertaining enough. After all, mothers can be very scary.
~ The
Lady Miz Diva
January 18th, 2013
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