January is a bit of a weird month. Christmas is gone, but the cold is still here. Everybody's back in school and almost everyone is trying to get in shape again after being wracked with guilt over their indulgence of the holiday season. January is also one of the worst months of the year. Why? Because the movies that come out in January always suck! Every now and then, though, you get one movie that is actually really good. It may not be anything special, but it's at least entertaining and it gives you some hope that there will be more good movies to come this year. Mama is one of those movies. Now, I know that I listed this as one of the movies I was most looking forward to, but to be honest, I was really just looking for padding so the list wouldn't look so flimsy. I just wanted to see it because it looked entertaining. And it was.
The one complaint that I've heard about this movie is that this is all material that we have seen before in other horror movies in terms of scares. And I would not debate that. It's true, this is all stuff we've seen before and while that may be a turn off to some folks, I didn't really complain. For starters, this movie may not be groundbreaking or a game changer, but it never claimed to be. What you see is what you get. And as far as this all being familiar, we may have seen this stuff before, but this movie did it better than a lot of other movies I've seen, mainly for M. Night Shyamalan.
So what's the story? Well, we start with a father who goes nuts because his business and his marriage are failing. He snaps, kills two of his partners and his wife and runs away with his two daughters to an abandoned cabin in the woods. Before he commits murder-suicide on his two daughters, he is grabbed and killed by a phantom who then raises the two girls in the cabin as its own. Five years later, the girls are discovered in the cabin and taken to live with their uncle (who is their father's twin) and his girlfriend played by Nikolaj-Coster Waldau of Game of Thrones (who doubles as both brothers) and a punk rocker Jessica Chastain, who continues to impress more and more. Things seem okay and the girls' recovery seems to be going alright, except for the fact that both are still obsessed with this Mama character, who has followed them back to their uncles' house. From there, freaky ass thing after freaky ass thing occurs and the couple race to find out what the deal is with this ghost and why she is out to get them. If you like ghost movies and are just looking for a solid thriller, then Mama would be the perfect movie. It's nowhere near being a new horror classic like Cabin in the Woods, but it's an entertaining flick and many would and have found it enjoyable.
Final Grade: B, See it in the theater
