Mama Just Killed A Man....Put A Gun Against His Head...Pulled My Trigger Now He's Dead....

Now that It looks to be well on its way to becoming a box office phenomenon like we've never seen for the horror genre before (it already made $51 million yesterday and will probably make as much as $105 million by the time the weekend is done), it looks like director Andy Muschietti is well on his way to becoming a big modern day horror movie filmmaker with only his second feature film. What was his first movie prior to It? Why it was none other than the 2013 feature Mama, a horror movie executive produced by Guillermo Del Toro (who is additionally credited as "presenting" the movie) that debuted back in January 2013.


The premise of Mama concerns Lucas Desange (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) trying to search for his nieces, Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), who went missing after his brother took them into the woods following said brother committing acts of murder. His nieces are found, without Lucas's brother, living completely alone in an abandoned cabin in the woods where they have gone feral in order to survive. Lucas and his girlfriend and the lead character of this story, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), are given custody of the girls and try to raise them right despite neither of them, particularly rocker Annabel, having much experience with raising kids.

While trying to raise the two girls, a darker force watches over these youngsters, a spirit Victoria and Lilly call Mama. Originally thought to be a figment of their imagination conjured up to provide them with a reliable parent figure while stranded in the wilderness, it turns out this is very much a real entity, one whose presence in the newfound home of Victoria and Lilly gradually increases and even ends up sending Lucas to the hospital. Mama's control over the house is growing just as Annabel is trying to connect more with her new adopted daughters and Mama isn't going to let go her control over these young girls without a fight.

Considering it's another entry in the long line of January horror movies, many of which are subpar in quality, and the lack of conversation I'd heard around Mama since its initial January 2013 release, I was surprised to find this one to be a solid horror movie with some clever tricks up its sleeve. Between this and It, Muschietti seems to know just how to make horror fare that doesn't forget to create some well-realized characterization grounding for the freakiness. Whereas in It a coming-of-age story was framed around a spooky clown terrorizing youngster, here it's a mom trying to rise to the occasion of being a parent that gets framed against a paranormal horror movie.

Playing the role of said mother is Jessica Chastain, taking on a more light-hearted role compared to other parts in her filmography like a zookeeper in the holocaust or person trying to hunt down Osama Bin Laden. Tasked with brunette hair and a rocker personality, Chastain fares quite well in this part and it's cool that both the performance and the writing of this character feel organic to the story, they don't just feel like they're shoehorned in to kill time in between the scares. Speaking of the scares, there is some fun to be had in the more subdued execution of some more chilling moments, such as a wide shot depicting Lilly playing in her room with another unidentified person.

In contrast to It finding much of its best moments in its third act, Mama loses some of its steam in that section of its own story, mainly because the plot drags as the characters try to search for clues behind the existence of Mama and Mama herself loses some of her impact once she becomes a clear on-screen presence with a more rote design brought to life, though even here there are still some decent scares and character beats. Even when it putters out a bit in its climax, Mama still registers as some above-average horror cinema and a good example of why Andy Muschietti is a real talent behind the camera as a horror cinema auteur.