The reason why I am bringing this up? I just wish that Mama had been released when I had to write that essay. It would have made it a whooooole lot easier!
Mama follows two young children, Victoria (Morgan McGarry) and Lilly (Maya & Sierra Dawe) as they are kidnapped from their home as their Father, Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has, for unknown reasons, killed his boss and their Mother and is now on the run. When they find an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods, Jeffery is killed by an unseen assailant (who Victoria describes as 'floating') who then looks after Victoria and Lilly in their new cabin home by feeding them cherries. A few years go by and Jeffrey's brother, Lucas (also played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has never given up his search for his two nieces, despite his punk girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain) telling him otherwise. Against all odds, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) have grown up to be feral children, devoid of all social skills. However, because Lucas cannot prove that he can provide a stable home for the girls, they are at risk to be taken home by their 'evil' Great Aunt, Jean (Jane Moffat). With the help from Dr Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), Lucas and Annabel move in to a new home under constant surveillance by Dr Dreyfuss and his team. However, when the girls move in, it soon becomes obvious that they are not alone and that someone, or something, has followed them to the house, and it doesn't like when anyone else gets too close to finding out who they are or if anyone gets too close to the girls.
Mama is a horror film that has one of the most interesting setups I have seen in recent horror films. The idea of feral children creating an imaginary (or spiritual) mother figure is captivating and intriguing, as well as seeing how they develop their speech and movements before being allowed back into society. The lack of social interaction and their inability to communicate means they make great sympathetic yet mysterious villainous characters who we just don't know whether to trust or not. As an audience, we know that they are hiding a secret and the film does well in stringing along the characters into slowly finding out what we already suspect.
Another real positive to Mama is the characters themselves and the casting of actors that brought them to life. One of the real standouts are the children themselves and especially the two young actresses who take on the part of Victoria. While Lilly is the one who is more closely connected to their Mama, Victoria is the older sister who is able to communicate with other characters and ultimately show remorse for believing in the spirit of Mama. Young Megan Charpentier does a stand up job in showing the emotional turmoil that the young girl goes through when she starts to realise that Annabel is a much better Mother figure than their Mama will ever be. She almost steals every scene that she is in. However, Jessica Chastain also does a brilliant job in playing the troubled Annabel to life as she goes through the changes of being an immature young girl in a rock band to a mature young woman who has been left to look after two children. Sometimes, her immature rock band character at the beginning of the film was a little hard to swallow, because it was almost too much of a caricature of a rock chick, but thankfully her character doesn't stay that way for long and soon goes on her journey to maturity as she becomes the unlikely protagonist in the film.
In contrast to the strong beginning, Mama's biggest downfall is it's ending - it's just too over-the-top. Firstly, the build up and reveal as to who the Mama character is that the girls have been talking to throughout the film was too much of an anti-climax. Considering the girls had been imagining her and talking to Mama all through the film, the fact that she was just some random figure at the end, with a very small backstory, just felt disjointed and completely out of line with the strong build up at the beginning. Now, I don't want to give too much away, but Mama soon becomes just another cliched Hollywood horror villain who is just out for revenge. In fact, if you can't guess the backstory to the Mama figure when watching the film, then you haven't seen enough Hollywood horror films!
The other downfall with the ending is that the final battle scene is just too... over-the top, obvious and cliched. The Mama figure becomes a cartoon character as the audience see what she looks like in all her glory and it kills any kind of suspense or build up that the film had created before it. Not to mention the fact that the CGI used to create the character of Mama was pointless and just further served to sap out all of the creepiness of the character. Seeing a CGI elongated face in close-up just isn't scary. And I won't mention any more about what happens in the final battle, but lets just say that it left me scratching my head in wonderment about what actually was the point of the entire film and what actually was Mama's motivation. It also didn't provide a full conclusion for all of the characters, so there were a lot of unanswered questions.
So, after an extremely strong build-up at the beginning with a really interesting and original premise for a horror film, Mama manages to undo all of it's good work in a cliched Hollywood final battle scene at the end of the film. It's a shame, because I really was enjoying it right up until that moment...
*** / *****
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