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View Full Version : Mama (Andrés Muschietti)



EyesWideOpen
01-23-2013, 01:07 AM
imdb (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2023587/)

http://i213.photobucket.com/albums/cc261/gothamcentral79/Mama_zps2fc06188.jpg

Ezee E
01-23-2013, 01:13 AM
Kinda want to see this.

Spinal
01-23-2013, 03:28 AM
Just found out about this movie today. Also curious and hopeful.

Pop Trash
01-23-2013, 04:21 AM
Just found out about this movie today. Also curious and hopeful.

The Slant reviewer hated it, but I still think it sounds intriguing.

Henry Gale
01-23-2013, 05:12 AM
I thought this was pretty impressive.

I went in with mild expectations, especially since its production seemed to fit the bill of something like Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (which I thought was disappointingly sluggish and forgettable), only saw a handful of TV spots, but the reviews and generally positive momentum including a bunch of my friends looking forward to it got me on board. And I'm now really happy I saw it in the theatre, because it's just a well-made, effectively atmospheric, immersive and restrained all at once in genuinely creepy ways, and plays even its most routine cards at just the right times. Not to mention it doesn't forget to actually tell a story at the center of it, one that shapes the sort of gothic fables Del Toro is so drawn to into this more modernized horror film aesthetic.

It's nothing revolutionary to the genre, and it's definitely not perfect, but man, it just clicked for me. Really satisfying, effective stuff. I'm glad to see it's doing as well as it is, especially for the type of horror it represents.

***½ / B+

Watashi
01-23-2013, 05:46 AM
Matt Zoller Seitz praised it through the roof.

Kiusagi
01-27-2013, 08:41 PM
Not bad. A lot of jump scares which didn't do it for me, but the overall atmosphere did. I bought into the relationship with the family, so I connected with this film more on an emotional level than I expected. Good performances from all of them.

And Jessica Chastain as a goth... damn.

Henry Gale
01-27-2013, 09:54 PM
I think things like this and Insidious have done jump-scares better than most recent horrors because when they do employ them, they aren't fake-outs, and they're also not the only way they try to elicit their shocks.

Mama does them better, but I think that's because it also keeps up a generally stronger, more consuming and dread-ridden tone with better characters at the center of its blend of madness.

Skitch
03-27-2013, 06:05 PM
Mama - (a.k.a Hollywood is officially completely out of ghost story ideas.)

Pro - the special effects are excellent.
- the film was shot beautifully.
- the dream sequence was terrific
- the full row of children in my theater didn't make a peep. They were perfectly behaved.

Con - this is every single cliche and predictable scare ever devised by any ghost film ever. There wasn't an original idea in this entire film.
- stupid people doing stupid things. Has no character ever seen a movie with a ghost in it?
- the couple that stumbled in ten minutes into the movie and said the following very loud, throughout the movie:
"AWW HELL NAAW!!"
"NAW SHE DINT!!"
"DON GO IN DERE, GIRL!!"
*checks cell phone*
"YOU BELIEF DAT?! HAHA!!"
- all this lead up to one of the biggest, bizarro dubya tee eff nonsensical endings I've seen in a while. If nothing else, it looked pretty. I guess.

Odd - the amount of completely gratuitous straining PG-13 Jessica Chastain cleavage shots.

4/10

Rowland
05-27-2013, 04:33 AM
Starts off somewhat promisingly, and there's a sort of faux-splitscreen shot early on that is marvelous, but a stupid script and an over-reliance on cheesy CGI sinks this. Also, I'll join the chorus salivating over Chastain.

Grouchy
07-09-2013, 07:19 AM
This satisfied every single one of my expectations. It's a traditional ghost movie, with some typical plot developments, but the monster is interesting, the direction is wildly atmospheric and it remains tense until the very end. Sure, there might be CGI effects galore, but I for one think they were used well.

megladon8
10-08-2013, 06:24 PM
I really enjoyed this. Effectively creepy.

Certainly has some issues. Overreliance on "vital information shown through a hallucination/dream" - it felt like they got a little lazy in the writing stages.

However it's beautiful, and Mama herself is terrifying.

Jessica Chastain seemed a little miscast.

Dukefrukem
10-12-2013, 01:51 PM
This is the first ghost story I can remember where the ghost actually harms someone.

Kurosawa Fan
10-23-2013, 07:09 PM
I was really tempted to one-star this thing. I'm not sure I've seen a story that was as poorly conceived and completely illogical as this one in a long, long time. I mean, it was flat-out stoooooooooooooopid. The two leads lacked any chemistry, and their relationship made very little sense. The child psychiatrist (psychologist? scientist? Ah, who fuckin cares) was so transparent only someone completely brain dead would allow themselves to become victim to his machinations. Bringing those girls into that house and getting them alone with Chastain was so epically convoluted it was almost impressive ("There's got to be a better way!"). Mama herself was cool and creepy until we got a good look at her, at which point she became just another in a long list of poorly weighted victims of cartoonish CG effects (boy do I miss the days of real makeup and models). The finale and resolution was so bad I found myself trying to pick corn out of my teeth while the credits were rolling (why was the boyfriend able to leave the hospital on a whim? Why would he go to the cabin without letting anyone know, with no plan whatsoever? Why was he not more concerned with the attack he was victim to in the home, and the vision at the hospital? Why was I still watching at that point?).

Fuck it, I'm giving this one star. The first 30 minutes of atmosphere and the bendy, spider-walking kids just aren't enough to salvage this bomb.

Skitch
10-23-2013, 07:51 PM
I agree KF, and the more I've thought about this film the more I think I was too kind.

Raiders
10-23-2013, 08:08 PM
Not intending any offense, but it baffles me that someone would choose to approach most current mainstream horror films with any sense of logic surrounding the plot. I never choose to think of horror films as narrative, logical or linear creations. They are sensory experiences, trending some line between dream logic and pure viscera. I think it peculiar that so much of the reaction I have read to this film comes from people questioning motives and the ending's literalization of "mama" when I found it an unexpectedly challenging finale from a purely emotional stand-point. Horror films always get away with nasty endings for the sake of it, but here the ending was more sorrowful (it was reminiscent of the sad ghostly fates in the underrated/underseen Wind Chill) and I think the complaints against the appearance of Mama, while admittedly a bit unfortunate as CGI, miss the point of her presence not as an unseen horror character but as a tortured and violent ghost, longing for her own child again. In the end, what on the surface is a tragedy also has a hint of closure for both the mother who just wanted her child and the child who could never really be "of this world" any longer.

I respect the film's emotional currents and the slight tweaking of many genre elements and the intense focus on motherly bonds. Plot machnications were certainly unfortunate and the film cannot be held unaccountable to some internal logic, but for me, the visual medium of film is able to overcome and there is much skill and elegance in the film's visuals.

Spun Lepton
10-23-2013, 09:12 PM
Mama was an actor in make-up. They enhanced Mama's hair and clothing with CG, though. Just FYI.

Skitch
10-23-2013, 09:26 PM
I don't think its too much to ask for logic and narrative in a horror film. It doesn't always have to be that way, but I don't think its odd to want it.

Dukefrukem
10-23-2013, 09:29 PM
I don't think its too much to ask for logic and narrative in a horror film. It doesn't always have to be that way, but I don't think its odd to want it.

Of course! Imagine we did this to all genre films? "Well it's a romantic comedy so I guess it doesn't need logic so I won't criticize it when it when I'm disappointed".

Raiders
10-23-2013, 10:08 PM
OK. I didn't say ignore it altogether but that to seemingly judge the film almost squarely on this basis is strange to me.

And I also would say that I would judge a romance or comedy on this basis. One of my favorite "romance" films of recent years in The Lake House. To say it is narratively confusing is an understatement, but its expression of a unique "courtship" and of romantic longing, especially in a rapturous moment of timelines converging, is far more important to me. Film is more than its story.

Kurosawa Fan
10-23-2013, 11:32 PM
Wasn't basing it solely on the logic of the plot, just my review, because the plot was soooooo convoluted and brainless when it could have very easily arrived at "Jessica Chastain in house with girls and Mama" by other avenues that I couldn't get beyond it. Liked the first thirty minutes. Everything after was so utterly ruined by that plot and by character interactions and decisions that the rest wasn't worth focusing on anymore.

And Mama might have started as an actress, but she was so drastically painted over in post by CG that any actress involvement wasn't recognizable anymore.

Kurosawa Fan
10-23-2013, 11:36 PM
In other words, if a film (any film, but particularly horror) is going to sacrifice logic and reason in favor of mood and sense, it needs to be far more surreal and less focused on delivering the plot by way of clunky exposition.

ciaoelor
10-25-2013, 01:17 AM
And Mama might have started as an actress, but she was so drastically painted over in post by CG that any actress involvement wasn't recognizable anymore.

Mama was actually played by the actor Javier Botet who played that creepy thing at the end of [REC], the Spanish version. The actor is naturally tall and skin-ny, and check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4MVdHJEFI

Kurosawa Fan
10-25-2013, 01:47 PM
Mama was actually played by the actor Javier Botet who played that creepy thing at the end of [REC], the Spanish version. The actor is naturally tall and skin-ny, and check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE4MVdHJEFI

It would have been so much better had they just allowed him to play Mama that way with a little help from wires for floating purposes, rather than interfere with a lot of poor, cheesy CG.

Dead & Messed Up
12-03-2013, 03:35 AM
Very lukewarm to this. KF makes some very good points about the plot logic. Rowland is right-on about that early "split-screen" scene being fantastic - it's one of the best horror images I've seen this year. I get where Raiders is coming from with the idea that horror, as a more expressionism-inclined genre, should be able to get away with less "sense," but the film does go to enough trouble to give its plotting real-world logic that it's hard to ignore some of the shoddiness.

The first half of the film generates some real mood and tension, but by the end, I just got sick of that ghost. Regardless of the amount of CGI, the effect was used too much. If it were only seen a few times, its design might've had more power, but by the end, I was just sick of looking at Mama's stupid open-mouthed stupid face.

And in the end, the little girl's a moth. Double-you tee fuck.