Woah Mamá! WARNING: Spoilers, stream of consciousness writing

Review, Part 1

Mama is an outstanding piece of work. It’s got classical style, and a surprising lack of gore. The scares are real, and the imagery is the high-quality we’ve come to expect from the director of ‘Pan’s Labyrinth’ and the Hellboy movies.

I watched the short film it’s based on, Mamá, and the influence is clear. The sequence appears almost exactly the same in the full-length film, albeit with different actors. The effects are good for something released on youtube. I’d recommend watching it either before or after you see the film; it’s a wonderful piece of work that spoils nothing.

The scariness of Mama comes from classic build-up of suspense. There are few jump scares; the terror is allowed to build slowly. I could feel the whole audience back up when Mama was about to come onscreen. There was complete silence during most of the film; amazing considering how many young teenagers were in the audience. I was astounded that it was rated PG-13, given how scary it was. ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’ another Del Toro film was rated R. It had about the same level of swearing, and was much less scary. I can only attribute it to the gore; seeing thousands of tiny faeries pulling bloody teeth out makes people a little more squeamish than a splotch of blood on a tiny bundle. Guess the board doesn’t rate on pure pant-shitting terror these days.

A woman walks towards a room where something is playing tug-of-war with the youngest girl. We never see the entity. We only see that it is very tall, or perhaps floating. And the stand-in Mother figure Annabel is getting closer to the room. It’s the closest I’ve ever come to screaming ‘Bitch, don’t go in there!” while in a theater.

The sound is terrifying as well. The scariest moment in the film for me was hearing the not-quite inhuman moans and grunts of Mama when she was off screen. The visuals are very effective as well, but the snarling, grunting wild woman is most effective when off-screen. Especially when the characters hear it, and know something is waiting for them literally around the next corner.

Things that were once human and now aren’t have always scared me the most. The cenobites from the Hellraiser series, Freddy Kruger, the Ghosts from The Grudge; all transformed by death into something terrifying. I guess that’s what it boils down to: a vision of life after death that doesn’t conform to Judeo-Christian norms. I am a practicing Baptist, and have strong personal beliefs about what awaits us in the afterlife. Nothing terrifies me quite like seeing a prolonged existence after shuffling off the mortal coil. Or perhaps it’s that evil can survive death, and avoid their eternal punishment so they can continue to wreak havoc. But Mama didn’t exactly fir the evil mold. She was driven to protect those girls, certainly, but she wasn’t exactly evil.

Mama was insane and possibly suffered from a mental disorder (likely Downs syndrome, if the facial structure of the character is any clue) and, having died over a hundred years ago, wasn’t treated all too well, we assume. She doesn’t understand that she’s hurting the children by keeping them from society. She even saves their lives at the beginning of the film, when their distraught father (who’s just murdered his estranged wife and his business partner) prepares to kill himself AND THEM. That was one moment when the whole audience rooted for Mama. Fuck that guy. He got what he deserved.

Weirdly, the same actor plays daddy dearest’s brother. It was to help establish a connection for the girls, but it’s a little jarring, especially when Dad reached out to his bro in a dream. “Please save my girls.” You were the asshole that was gonna shoot them. You get no say in this, numbnuts.

The creepiest visuals are when Mama is interacting with Annabel. There’s a moment she mistakes the hunched-up ghost for the youngest girl, realizes her mistake, and finally sees Mama in the flesh, so to speak. The reactions are very visceral. You feel like you’d do the same things the actress does; scream, run, and basically freak the fuck out. You feel very connected to the characters; they’re all realistic. No stereotypical ‘no such thing as ghosts’ men and ‘What a weird noise, I’ll wander around and check it out in my bra and panties’ women. It’s just a couple trying to make their life work under stressful circumstances. 

Tony Shalube is very intriguing as the doctor, and I give the character props for not being the ‘science, never anything else’ outsider. He believes with enough evidence. Sadly, this results in him getting killed, but a least he left all the evidence behind for Annabel. His death is done classically, lights strobing as Mama gets closer and closer…It doesn’t end well.

The death of the well-meaning, but bitchy great aunt is a bit more satisfying. She’s used by Mama to get the kids to the cabin (although, Mama can touch physical things no problem, so why she used her is unexplained). Annabel and Uncle Daddy find her at the cabin, at which point she falls down dead…and completely hollowed out. We’re left to imagine if moths did that, or if Mama ate away at her…