We’ve come to expect a lot from Guillermo del Toro, wouldn’t you say? Pan’s Labyrinth and The Devil’s Backbone are, I would say, alternative modern classics, using the supernatural and fantastic in innovative new ways to remind us of our sense of childhood wonder. Hellboy and Hellboy 2: The Golden Army were mighty impressive visually. And Pacific Rim, del Toro’s next directing project finally coming out in theaters next year, looks pretty much amazing.
But what del Toro has done for
years, and which is kind of annoying, is produce films from up-and-coming
filmmakers he takes under his wing. I’m not knocking the second part of
that—mentorship is good, mentorship is nice, yay, collaboration! So often,
however, what comes of this cooperation is a film that feels very much like del
Toro’s vision infringed on the overall rest of the narrative, like he just
added some stuff he’s known for so people would certainly recognize his
influence. It happened with The Orphanage and Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark, and
now it’s happened with Mama, from director Andrés Muschietti.

Mama is about young sisters (Megan
Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), whose financier father goes on a
killing spree, murdering his business partners, his wife, and almost them
before something swoops down and kills him.
Left in a cabin for five years with the ghost looking after them, Victoria and
Lilly become animalistic and unsocialized, crawling around on all fours,
surviving on cherries, and only saying the word “mama.” It’s a weird family
dynamic, to say the least.


It’s not that the performances are
bad: Chastain has never been anything but fully committed in any role she’s
ever had; Coster-Waldau is charming and likable; and the girls, Charpentier and
Nélisse, are excellent either in creepy mode or when cleaned-up. Similar praise
should be given to 7-foot-tall Javier Botet, who portrays Mama before layers of
CGI are added on top of him to make him a female ghost.
But good acting can’t forgive bad
effects or narrative choices, and yes, there are a lot of those. Mama looks too
much like the soul-sucking Dementor villains from the Harry Potter series, and her
varying traits—fangs, tentacles, claws, really long limbs that allow her to
move around like a spider—take her out of ghost territory and into something
different that’s never explained. The final chase defies the internal logic the
film has already built. And though the film has a few solid gotcha! moments,
they lack the impact of the initial short film.
Muschietti has more space for
his idea in this feature version of Mama, but it’s actually to his detriment. I know it's a movie review cliche, but still: The original was better.
2.5 out of 5 Guttenbergs