Movie Review of Mama

Well I saw the movie Mama last night. This is a new movie from Guillermo del Toro about two girls abandoned in a cottage in the woods and what happens when they are rescued. The movie opens with them being loaded into a car by their dad who is the guy that plays Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones. He is supposed to have shot his business partners and his wife after some kind of financial crash.

They flee to some snowy part of New England and accidentally crashes his car. The father and his two kids who are 3 and 1 find an abandoned cottage in the woods. He then tries to shoot himself and when he couldn't tries to shoot the girls "Of Mice and Men" style. Before he could do it he is grabbed by something and tossed into the air and is presumably killed. Then we see the children trying to survive in front of a fire and a cherry rolls into view. Whatever killed the father is now taking care of the girls.

Then we cut to 5 years later and it turns out that the girls father has a twin and he is looking for the girls but is almost out of money to pay the searchers. He is reassured by his GF Annabel who is played by Jessica Chastain who looks barely recognizable as a tattooed, black-haired bob cut, bassist of an all girl rock band.

The girls are eventually found but they are feral and covered in filth. A psychologist works with them and eventually breaks them out of their state. The older girl is able to speak bu the younger girl is mono-syllabic and moves around like some sort of freakish monkey. Del Toro really does a good job of making their movements very off-putting and weird.

I'm not going to do a total analysis of the plot but suffice it to say there were quite a few interesting scenes and nice jump scares along the way. All of the roles were acted with quite a bit of gravitas and both child actors did a great job. The younger girl that played Lilly did an exceptional job of being creepy and weird and generally freaking out the audience. I think Chastain is a great chameleon type actress and it will be nice to see her in newer films.

The creature was hidden quite nicely though the first two acts of the film. It was mostly shadows and lots of weird floating hair. There was one scene where you can see that the creature has had all of her bones broken and it moves in this lurching, crawling manner. It gave me a little shiver that was quite nice to see in a scary movie.

The ending was perfect IMO and was not formulaic Hollywood. It shows that Del Toro actually puts a little extra into his movies so they won't just be another generic ghostly horror type of movie. This movie could have easily been another creature-feature like the Paranormal Activities and its many offshoots but Del Toro and the great acting raised it above those films. One thing that kind of sucked is that Nikolaj Coster-Waldau was missing from 2/3 of the movie. He was injured near the beginning but then kind of disappears for quite a bit of the movie. I guess there might have been some scheduling problems or something because I found it pretty odd.

After seeing the creatures and how he filmed the flashbacks in Mama I would love to see Guillermo del Toro do an H. P. Lovecraft adaption for the big screen. Maybe he could tackle At the Mountains of Madness, Shadow of Innsmouth, or Dagon. Hell, he would be great doing anything from Lovecraft's Dream Cycle especially The Dream Quest of Unknown-Kadath. Unfortunately his new film Pacific Rim looks like ass so I won't be seeing that one. In any case Mama is a great movie and is a definite must Redbox. However, seeing it in the theater really doesn't add much.