Review of Mama (2013) by Ian S — 11 Nov 2013

This preposterous gothy fairytale contains a fairly solid premise (two abandoned girls are raised by a ghost) which is squandered thanks to clunky, gimmicky direction; a silly, melodramatic score; disastrous logical leaps (Coster-Waldau waking up from a coma to go wandering around a forest at night, without telling anybody, for no reason at all springs to mind) and one of the stupidest endings I've seen in quite a while.

The film shoots itself in the foot from the off, declaring definitively "yup, there's a ghost and it's real" before the opening titles have rolled, and you spend at least the first half of the film waiting for everyone in the film to catch up. Frustrating. Several ancillary plot threads go nowhere at all, or are introduced by way of some awful contrivance - indeed, there's an entire character (Daniel Kash as Dr. Dreyfuss) who is singularly a nowhere-going contrivance, and his merciless hamming nearly sinks the film. Both Chastain and Coster-Waldau are slumming it quite horribly here. Mama seemed to have all the ingredients, but the result is an overbaked, overrated mess.