Having a scream with less-is-more
By Todd McCarthy |
January 27, 2013, Sunday
|
Print Edition
Print Edition
A playful, elegantly made little horror film, "Mama" teasingly sustains a game of hide-and-seek as it tantalizes the audience with fleeting apparitions of the title character while maintaining interest in two deeply disturbed little orphan girls.
Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories.
But the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans. Still, less bloodthirsty female teens could make up the difference at the box office, as the film provokes enough tension and gasps to keep viewers grabbing their armrests.
In essence, "Mama" represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out.
With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, Andy Muschietti shows a confident hand for a first-time director, not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.
A prologue shows a distraught father, apparently devastated after a financial setback, driving his tiny daughters up snowy mountain roads to a summer house in the woods.
Just as he is about to shoot the older girl, he is prevented from doing so by some kind of beast, vaguely glimpsed by the youngster.
Five years later, Victoria (Megan Carpenter, left) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) are discovered; miraculously, they have somehow survived by themselves, although they look like feral beasts. Taking them in, are the dead father's artist brother Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his punky grrrl band girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).
They're set up in a luxurious suburban home by a prominent doctor, Gerald Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), for the exclusive right to study the girls.
Then weird apparitions materialize: Large moths and web-like patterns on the walls and the sight of little Lilly tugging playfully with an mostly unseen presence through a door frame. This may be a pristine, immaculate looking house, but it's also haunted.
Muschietti does a pretty good job of sustaining interest until finally needing to let the cat (or whatever it is) out of the bag.
What this turns out to be is scarcely a surprise, but it's still good for a few more startling moments before being revealed in its full and eerie glory.
Being sold primarily on the name of its godfather, Guillermo del Toro, this Canadian-Spanish co-production from Universal is refreshingly mindful of the less-is-more horror guidelines employed by 1940s master Val Lewton, not to mention Japanese ghost stories.
But the PG-13 rating might prove too restrictive for the gory tastes of male core genre fans. Still, less bloodthirsty female teens could make up the difference at the box office, as the film provokes enough tension and gasps to keep viewers grabbing their armrests.
In essence, "Mama" represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out.
With fine special effects and a good sense of creating a mood and pacing the jolts, Andy Muschietti shows a confident hand for a first-time director, not taking the whole thing so seriously that it becomes overwrought.
A prologue shows a distraught father, apparently devastated after a financial setback, driving his tiny daughters up snowy mountain roads to a summer house in the woods.
Just as he is about to shoot the older girl, he is prevented from doing so by some kind of beast, vaguely glimpsed by the youngster.
Five years later, Victoria (Megan Carpenter, left) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) are discovered; miraculously, they have somehow survived by themselves, although they look like feral beasts. Taking them in, are the dead father's artist brother Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his punky grrrl band girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).
They're set up in a luxurious suburban home by a prominent doctor, Gerald Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), for the exclusive right to study the girls.
Then weird apparitions materialize: Large moths and web-like patterns on the walls and the sight of little Lilly tugging playfully with an mostly unseen presence through a door frame. This may be a pristine, immaculate looking house, but it's also haunted.
Muschietti does a pretty good job of sustaining interest until finally needing to let the cat (or whatever it is) out of the bag.
What this turns out to be is scarcely a surprise, but it's still good for a few more startling moments before being revealed in its full and eerie glory.
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