Mama Reviews
Top CriticBy splitting the action between several different characters and locations, the plot dissipates the suspense and lacks focus, as if it has been bolted together from disparate, ill-fitting pieces.
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| Original Score: 3/5
Screenplay contrivances aside, it's as stylish and atmospheric as modern horror gets.
Even if the beats are familiar, Muschietti sustains a remarkable mood throughout: wintry, elemental and stark, like a late Sylvia Plath poem.
I was guessing right till the bitter, scary, transcendent end.
It starts out strongly, using evocative visuals and an unsettling backstory to establish a creepy tableau, but it proves unable to sustain those strengths all the way to the finish line.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
The metaphorical mother-child connection becomes a mystical horror show of significant power. Sadly it comes too late to save "Mama."
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
It's an interesting effort ... although, sadly, in the end "effort" is really the crucial word.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There's something eerily effective about juxtaposing childhood innocence with the violent, the supernatural, the deranged. Evil shines all the more brightly when held up against the sweet promise of youth.
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| Original Score: B+
Chastain has an excellent time. And so did I, for most of the movie: It's much more suspenseful than violent, being careful not to allow us to figure out Mama too quickly.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
There's something dead and rotting at the center of "Mama," and it isn't the ghost of the woman who lends the horror film its title.
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| Original Score: 1.5/4
"Mama" is skillfully made, and although Chastain is the best thing in it, she's not the only thing in it.
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| Original Score: 3/4
This is a picture about how a mother's love can be nourishing at its best but suffocating in the extreme. Chastain embraces that idea wholly, without squeezing the life out of it.
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| Original Score: B-
The fact that Guillermo del Toro is an executive producer of Mama is a tip-off that this won't be just another horror film with misbehaving and soon-to-be-dismembered teenagers or a drooling, slime-soaked monster.
Instead of delivering buckets of guts and gore, this ghost story offers a strong sense of time and place, along with the kind of niceties that don't often figure into horror flicks ...
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| Original Score: 4/5
"Mama" announces the arrival of a director who works unusually well with actors-the two children are truly scary-and who creates highly charged environments, effective sound designs and powerful fantasy sequences.
Though "Mama" doesn't work, it has the ghost of a good idea at its core.
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| Original Score: 2/4
Surprisingly, this patchwork pastiche often works.
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| Original Score: 6/10
Like another del Toro stamp-of-approval Spanish horror entry, The Orphanage, Muschietti's Mama is full of arty tropes - sepia-toned flashbacks, flickering lights, menacing murmurings.
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| Original Score: 3/4
You know something is up when what looks like a cheapie fright flick is produced by Guillermo Del Toro and boasts an Oscar-nominated actress in Jessica Chastain. Mama doesn't live up to their potential, but the film knows how to creep you out.
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| Original Score: 2.5/4
"Mama" is a smartly refreshing departure, a truly scary movie exemplifying horror at its purest.
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| Original Score: 3/4
The frustration ... is how much the movie leans on made-ya-jump scares and contrived plot devices when its quieter chills and already fraught setups are so potent.
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| Original Score: 2/4
If you're going to have a ghost in your movie, it might be a good thing to present a viable alternative to that ghost. "Mama," however, presents a battle between two not very good options before crumbling like a sheet on a string.
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| Original Score: 2/5
The atmosphere is appropriately creepy, and there are some starts, if not outright scares. But it just gets stupid.
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| Original Score: 2.5/5
An elegant and edgy thriller, Mamais a ghost story laced with fairytale sensibilities, benefitting from the nightmarish, artful influence of executive producer Guillermo del Toro.
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| Original Score: 3/4
Mama is clumsily written and choppily edited, but Chastain doesn't have a bad scene in it, and you can see why she chose to be in this supernatural ghost story.
"Mama" succeeds in scaring the wits out of us and leaving some lingering, deeply creepy images ...
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| Original Score: 3/4
Nothing in the movie is quite original, yet Muschietti, expanding his original short, knows how to stage a rip-off with frightening verve.
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| Original Score: B
What's under the bed? Who's behind that door? What's making those vaguely satanic noises? These and other thought-provoking questions are entertained in Mama, a visually polished but overly repetitive chiller.
It never hits the high notes of Mr. del Toro's own films or successfully weaves between reality and fantasy as it should.
In essence, Mama represents a throwback and a modest delight for people who like a good scare but prefer not to be terrorized or grossed out.
Mama never delivers the primal terror its premise would suggest.
Expertly conjured atmosphere only gets Muschietti so far, but there's enough genuine promise here that you're willing to cut this talented newcomer some slack.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
