Before he unleashed an updated Pennywise on the world in his ambitious, two-movie take of Stephen King’s gargantuan It, Andy Muschietti was schmoozing with none other than Guillermo del Toro in order to bring twisted parent horror, Mama, to the screen. Of course, because del Toro had his fingers in the Mama pie (ew), this tale of a feral, whispy ghost and the two young girls she adopts goes hard on the dark fairy tale vibes. But despite the fact that the film is a feature length expansion of Muschietti’s same-titled short film, you can feel the finger prints of the more experienced filmmaker all over this thing.
Delivering animalistic children, parenting allegories, lots of moths and Jessica Chastain as the base player of a metal band, can Mama manage to merge the sensibilities of the two filmmakers to give us a ghost story deeper than your average spookster?
After taking an immense hit during the 2008 financial crisis, distraught and ruined stockbroker Jeffrey Desange figures the only thing left to do is to murder his estranged wife and work colleagues and then abduct his two infant daughters to head off into the woods for a selfish spot of murder/suicide. However, after crashing his car in the snow and discovering an abandoned cabin in the woods, his attempt to draw a final line under his collapsing world is halted by an unseen, ethereal force that kills him and takes special interest in the three year-old Victoria and the one year-old Lily.
Five years pass and Jeffrey’s twin brother, Lucas, has sunk every cent he owns into having the forrest searched section by section until some closure of what happened to his brother and nieces can be obtained. However, while his cash flow steadily runs dry and his musician girlfriend, Annabel wonders how long she can put up with it, the girls are discovered by chance, alive in that gnarly cabin. While more animal than human as they scamper around on all fours and snarl at intruders, the authorities ultimately hand them over to Lucas and Annabel as their new guardians. While understandably intimidated by now having to care for two, very troubled girls who have somehow survived in the wilderness, both Lucas and Annabel find that the deal is sweetened when child psychologist Dr. Gerald Dreyfuss offers them sizable accommodation in return to further study the girls.
But just how did two infant siblings survive for five whole years deep in the forrest on their own? Simple, Victoria and Lily weren’t on their own and were adopted by a lost, wandering spirit the girls call “Mama”. But while being brought back to civilisation may be the best thing for the girls, the intensely jealous Mama just wants them back and will violently turn on anyone who gets between the cubs of a screeching, ghostly mama bear…
As a premise, Mama is one loaded with promise and it’s also one that, thanks to Muschietti’s extravagant eye and Del Toro’s love of dark fairy tales, mostly lives up to its promise when dealing with the darker themes of parenthood. Plus, it also contains a lot of hallmarks that were buzzing around horror at the time which delivers a more classic ghost story that delivers creepy kids, vapourous spirits with gnarled psychology and a whole lot of allegory concerning the fearsome nature of raising a child. It also looks remarkably pretty, with artistic flourishes up the wazoo that sees moths flap and flutter about the place, either acting as whimsical foreshadowing for Mama herself, or just being symbolic of the afterlife in general. But as the film continues, it becomes fairly apparent that while Muschietti certainly has a del Toro-ian eye for tragic horror, some of his directorial weaknesses are still fairly apparent. For a start, despite having creature playing veteran Javier Botet involved in Mama’s spindly-fingered performance, the director has something of an over reliance on CGI that sometimes isn’t quite up to snuff which caused similar issues with both It movies, the Welcome To Derry spinoff show and, most infamously, The Flash. It’s less apparent here as it was watching Ezra Miller try to catch blatantly digital babies, but sometimes the computer generated attempts to unnaturally warp Mama’s body is less Crimson Peak and more PS2.
However, now that I’ve put the boot into the visuals (which, aside from the odd duff shot, are actually pretty passable), two things manage to ensure that the film stands out for more than just Muschietti’s poetic eye. The first is Jessica Chastain’s Anbabel who not only looks great in her metal chick phase, but who helps guide the central arc of her becoming a reluctant mother due to supernatural circumstances. By comparison, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau has far less to do despite playing two roles thanks to the script sidelining him at any opportunity in order to give Chastain more time with her young co-stars and allow her mothering instincts to kick in organically.
Fortunately, the young children employed to play Victoria and Lily manage to not only play the snarling, scuttling forrest children versions of their characters well, but also give them enough humanity so when they get back to civilisation, they create something of a tragic arc. Being the older of the two, Megan Charpentier’s Victoria still can vaguely remember her life before being babysat by a ghost in the woods and therefore is more receptive to the efforts of Annabel and Lucas. However, as Lily was only one year-old when her father went postal, she’s far more reliant on Mama which ultimately leads to an impressively sad finale that admirably doesn’t go for the easy answers.
However, for every thing Mama does right, it just can’t help but feel like del Toro-lite, especially with all those fluttering moths and incredibly detailed set work; and rather delving deep into dark fantasy or going all out delivering jump scares, Muschietti seems – like Mama herself – stuck between two worlds. He finally nailed that earnest brand of surreal jump scares with It: Chapter One, but while his feature debut suffers from feeling more like a lesser offering from its executive producer, there’s still enough good ideas, performances and twisted spirits to ensure that it’s still an interesting watch.
Better than it’s reputation suggests, Mama delivers creeps, pathos and allegory by the bucket-full, but while Muschietti tries to follow in those darkly fantastical foot steps of del Toro, he finds himself stuck between something that’s genuinely moving and something that feels the need to jump through the hoops of a standard, 2013 scarer. Hardly the mother of all ghost movies, but still interesting nonetheless.
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