Mama (2013) Dir: Andy Muschietti

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I have had this 2013 horror film sat on my shelf waiting to be watched for years now, but it was only recently that I finally sat down to watch it. The film was directed by Andy Muschietti, director of both 'It' films, written by Muschietti and his wife Barbara Muschietti, who also produced the film, and executive produced by Guillermo del Toro. With so many talented names involved, it gave me some hope.

The film looked drab and dreadful. It had a truly horrible filter, two awful-looking dream sequences, and some genuinely horrendous CGI that would have looked more at home in the nineties. If this film had better special effects, it would have been easier to take the supernatural element of it seriously, but as such, I really couldn't. The supernatural entity was genuinely quite laughable, in terms of how it looked.

The story flirted with some genuinely interesting themes, but the execution wasn't quite there. There were times when I thought that the film was going to do something genuinely quite unique and effective, but it wasn't quite able to pull it off. I didn't hate the end product, but it also wasn't particularly great. It was fine as a typical horror film, but its potential left me a little disappointed.

Unsurprisingly, based on her comparative name value and reputation, Jessica Chastain was by far the best performer in the film. I almost didn't recognise her initially, because of her very different hairstyle in the film - it took me a second to identity that it was her. Chastain's acting was very solid, however, in my opinion. I saw one review call this one of her best performances, and whilst I would not go that far, I was still satisfied.

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau gave an adequate, if slightly uninspired performance in his key role. I wouldn't go so far as to call it bad acting, but it certainly wasn't close to the level of Chastain. With that said, I can appreciate that could be considered an unfair comparison to make. The two young actors in the film; Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse, were decent enough for what their roles required. Charpentier, who admittedly was older, and had for more screentime, was comfortably the better actor of the two.

Overall, I think this really could have been a very solid horror film, but underwhelming writing and some god-awful special effects dragged it down into the realms of mediocrity. The film threatened originality, but served up a pretty generic story. I think that, unfortunately, is my main take away from the film; it could and should have been better. Regardless, it wasn't a bad horror film, certainly compared to a lot of the drivel that came out in that era, so I suppose it has that going for it.