Mama (2013)

Since last night was Halloween I thought it was time to watch a horror film and I recorded this one off The Horror Channel recently. It features a couple of young children, two little girls who are left alone in the woods by their father who has committed a murder. The father is taken by a sinister presence, “mama” and the girls are left alone with it. Their uncle uses up all the money he inherited from his brother to pay trackers to find the girls. The girls are eventually found after 5 years but are feral. They become the subject of a psychiatrist intent on finding the truth behind the thing they call “mama”. The psychiatrist seeks to set up the uncle, his girlfriend Annabel and the two girls up in a house used for therapeutic rehabilitation. It is there that the entity known as “mama” reappears for the girls. Over time the elder girl becomes more trusting of her uncle and Annabel, the younger girl doesn’t because she can’t communicate as well, however she and Annabel eventually bond. Due to various happenings the story behind mama emerges and it’s a ghost story about a woman who loses her baby due to locals chasing her to the edge of a cliff.

The film is reasonably well made and acted, Jessica Chastain portrays Annabel well. The two little girls do well in their roles too. It builds suspense quite well but I felt let down at the end of it. The visuals might have seemed impressive in 2013 on the big screen but didn’t do much for me, watching on a normal TV screen at normal volume (headphones actually).