Maggie Thompson (Diana Silvers) is the new kid at her High School and both her and her Mom are struggling to fit into the town that her Mother called home when she was a teenager. Maggie's woes are softened by her quickly connecting with a group of partying teenagers who request the help of local veterinarian Sue Ann Ellington (Octavia Spencer) to get them some booze. She proceeds to do just that in addition to letting the teens use her basement as a place to party. Maggie and her friends become close to Sue Ann, who soon garners the affectionate nickname Ma, who may just have some vicious secret plans of her own connected to a traumatic past.
Tate Taylor and Scotty Landes' script really struggles in its first two acts with figuring out what perspective to tell this story from. Maggie is introduced as our lead character but too many times we cut away to shots and scenes from Sue's perspective that make it clear to the viewer that she's got malicious motives long before Maggie and her pals catch on. Constantly shifting the story back-and-forth from the POV of the boring teenager characters to Sue doesn't do much beyond undercutting the tension of the overall film. How can Ma possibly try to create suspense out of whether or not Sue is really altruistic when its own screenplay's inability to focus has given away the game?
Taylor's uninspired direction doesn't do much to help sell an uneasy atmosphere either, despite filming a story that eventually goes to some pretty gruesome and over-the-top places. Save for a recurring visual of wider shots showing Sue hiding just around the corner from the teenage characters, Taylor's directorial sensibilities eschew any chance for memorably unusual imagery and remain firmly generic. Coupled with some similarly lackluster editing, Ma is rarely able to use its visual sensibilities to heighten any sense of tension. Luckily for viewers, Ma's secret weapon when it comes to creating any sense of unease or entertainment comes in the form of its primary lead actor, Octavia Spencer.
Whatever Ma hands Spencer, she just embraces and then some. You need her to be a kindly presence the teens would initially gravitate to, she can sell that. You need her to be emotionally affecting in depicting Sue being distraught, she's done it before you even ask! Those are two qualities she's shown off quite frequently in her numerous prior impressive performances but where Spencer really shines in Ma is when she gets to act either unhinged or menacing, two qualities she hasn't been allowed to inhabit in her filmography up to this point. But Ma give her the chance to revel in the unhinged and the menacing, boy does it ever. Octavia Spencer excels in portraying those aspects of the role, she truly works in portraying someone intimidating who could really be capable of anything and that's particularly true in the third act that see's Sue taking her whole vengeance-fueled scheme to the next level of madness as well as Ma as a movie to the next level of quality.
Watching Spencer run a former High School rival over before jamming out to September by Earth, Wind, Fire is a delightfully gruesome scene made all the more deliciously wicked by Spencer's gonzo performance. There are plenty more bananas sequences like that moment in the home stretch of Ma that reveal this movie does weird messed-up horror far better than it does at attempting to generating subdued suspense. Ma is mostly a disposable horror movie that only well and truly livens up in its final half-hour, but when it does finally liven up, it seriously gets its pulse racing while Octavia Spencer is consistently excellent throughout the whole movie. Spencer's performance alone puts Ma above other recent middle-of-the-road recent Blumhouse horror fare. Tate Taylor hasn't exactly found his filmmaking calling with Ma, but at least he's found something more entertaining than The Help or The Girl on the Train, neither of which had the decency, like Ma does, to feature a wack-a-doodle scene where Octavia Spencer threatens Luke Evans' exposed genitals at knifepoint.
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