Mama (2013)

Mama (2013)

Victoria: Daddy, look!  There's a woman outside the window.  And she's not touching the floor.

The girls when they are found in the cabin.

The preview for Mama was pretty scary.  Two little girls, 1 and 3 years old, go missing.  They are found 5 years later having somehow survived in a cabin in the woods.  They claim they were cared for by a mysterious figure called Mama.  Their uncle and his girlfriend take them in, despite their serious issues (they scamper around like wild animals), and soon discover that Mama has followed the girls to their new home.  It was a spooky trailer, with a shadowy Mama figure and the eerie animalistic behavior of the girls.  After watching it, and thinking my girls were in bed, I screamed when I spotted Amelia peeking out at me from behind a corner, which was pretty funny.



Unfortunately, the best of the movie is in the trailer.  Mama is revealed so early and often that she loses her scare factor.  The girls' uncle is out of the picture so much he may as well not have been in the movie at all.  His girlfriend, Annabelle (the usually great Jessica Chastain playing it punk), is not likeable, and seems like the worst possible person to be caring for the damaged girls -it's hard to see why the uncle is dating her.

Despite the original premise, the movie falls back on scary movie cliches, and just generally falls short of being interesting or frightening.  To top it off, the ending is simultaneously overly sad and silly.