Mama has been dead for 125 years, so she’s missed the latest developments in parenting. For instance, since old-timey days it’s been frowned upon to levitate the kids, teach them to skitter on the floor like crabs or feed them bugs. But as for her conflicted emotions about raising small children — sometimes she wants to play with them, other times throw them off a cliff — parents watching will agree that some things never change.
This is the first 2008 financial-crisis horror flick I’ve seen, one that begins with a financier going bust, going nuts and then murdering everyone in sight. He drives off a cliff with two daughters — one a toddler, one an infant — but upon noticing that they’ve survived, he decides to shoot them anyway. That’s when (shrieking, wraithlike) Mama shows up and proves that she is no more to be messed with than Tyler Perry’s Madea.
Mama is a spectral being who helps the two children survive alone in a cabin in the woods for five years, which turns them into feral, mangy beasts who jump like fleas and snarl like wolverines.
Their dad’s brother, Lucas (Nikolaj CosterWaldau), finally finds them after an exhaustive search, causing disbelief in his happily childless punk-rocker girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain, in Joan Jett’s clothes). The two of them wind up leaving their messy urban alterna-world behind and raising the savage children together in a bland suburban dream house that disgusts Annabel’s Ramones-loving soul. Where the kids go, however, Mama follows. And she is one jealous bitch.
As Annabel, who is so tough her voice-mail message says “F – – k you” (edgy!), 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. Bonus: I love these anti-feminist allegories in which the independent, unsentimental, defiantly anti-motherhood chick is reformed by a taste of hearth and home. You know that by the second hour Annabel will be a hugging, crying mess, fiercely protective of her little ones and probably ordering a subscription to Redbook.
First-time writer-director Andy Muschietti, an Argentine discovered by Guillermo del Toro, relies too much, especially in the early going, on horror clichés (sudden loud noises and jagged blasts of music), but he does make the tension hum.
What ghost-Mama does to people she doesn’t like yields some wickedly creepy images, but the title character is scarier before we get a good look at her. Lots of scenes put special effects above story (Mama keeps oozing through walls, preceded by cloudbursts of butterflies, for no particular reason except it looks cool).
The many near-misses of Annabel almost discovering the otherworldly visitor become repetitive, and the back story is discovered far too easily. (Randomly, a records clerk disgorges all the secrets). But despite a great-looking climactic scene that shows off Mama’s talents, she is a poorly thought-out character: You’d think she’d just kill everyone who threatens to keep her from the kids, instantly. Moreover, as psychotically overprotective moms go, she’s still less unpleasant than Barbra Streisand in “The Guilt Trip.”