The Cinema Lounge: Mama

 Before going into this movie I decided I was gonna have a little drinking game going while I watched. The game was very simple, take a drink every time the word mama was said or seen on screen. Now unfortunately for me I had no alcohol on me at the time so I just used water instead to see how long it would take for me to finish my drink. Took about a little over half the movie for one water bottle. However if I had come prepared and brought a large bottle of whiskey with me it would've been gone in the last thirty minutes. Anyway, let's dive in.

Mama is a horror film produced by Guillermo del Toro and is directed by Andres Muschietti in his first feature length directorial effort. The film came about when del Toro saw Muschietti's short film that the movie is based on. Del Toro being impressed he decided that the short film was worthy of a feature length counter part. Now I've seen the short film and if that alone impressed del Toro, than the man is easily impressed.

The cast is a pretty decent one. Jessica Chastain stars in the lead role hot off the success of her Oscar nominated performance in the, over- hyped, Zero Dark Thirty. She does a fantastic job here as well playing a rather different part from any previous roles. She's accompanied by Nikolaj Coster- Waldau who plays her... boyfriend? fiancee? husband? I don't know it's not exactly clear but he does a fine job as well. Or at least until he's sidelined for most of the movie. Seriously, what's with these Jessica Chastain movies where the lead male has a big presence in the first thirty minutes but then just leaves for most of it and then pops back up at the end? I'm seeing a pattern here.

As far as the two little girls in the movie go, they do an okay job. Although they do stretch the boundary between cute and annoying a little to often. The older one, the character's name is Victoria, does most of the talking while the the younger one, Lily, is just there to creep everybody the fuck out.

Now on to Mama herself, or itself or whatever. Mama is basically just a ghost. One of the big problems with the film is that it's more of the same. It just copies every other modern ghost movie in ideas and images. Her design is where this is most apparent. I think back to The Woman In Black, a film that I very much enjoyed, and I remember the look of the ghost. In that it wasn't so much how vivid in detail or how great the effects were, cause they were maybe only a little better than Mama's, but it was how it was shot and it really created great fear and tension when ever the ghost was looming over a scene. In Mama, however, the ghost is reduced to nothing but shitty jump scares and effects that aren't good enough to show for long periods of time like they do.

The film does have a few good things going for it though. Jessica Chastain is great in this and she keeps the movie watchable. A few of the scares are decent enough, but only a few. The rest of the film is either average or just down right idiotic and lame. And the ending is so dumb, it was honestly hard for me not to get up, give the screen the finger, shout "Fuck you movie.", and leave.

It suffers from not only being a horror movie rated PG-13 but also from living in an age where CGI is over used. Now I personally do like CGI but only when it needs to be used and is so good you can barely believe it's not real i.e. 2009's Star Trek. CGI in a horror movie just doesn't work when the villain is all computer. Not only does it look bad but psychologically it's just not scary because you know for a fact that there's nothing there. I also feel CGI blood is a sin against nature, but one step at a time.

I felt that the movie deserved about a C for most it, but the ending brought it down enormously. It's kind of a shame cause I haven't seen a good del Toro produced horror movie in a long time. Here hoping that the awesome looking Evil Dead remake is as good as that trailer for it is. If you haven't seen it yet, get on over to Youtube and watch it cause you're in for a good time.

FINAL GRADE: D