Annabel (Jessica Chastain) learns more than she ever needs to know about motherhood in creepy MAMA
MAMA (Andres Muschietti, 2013)
Opens Friday, January 18
www.mamamovie.com
Jessica Chastain has rocketed into stardom in just two years, starring in seven major motion pictures in 2011 (including The Help and The Tree of Life) and four more in 2012 (from Madagascar 3 to Zero Dark Thirty) while also playing the lead role in the Broadway revival of The Heiress. Chastain kicks off 2013 with the intensely creepy scarefest Mama. Expanded from his Spanish-language short film of the same name, director and cowriter Andrés Muschietti turns motherhood inside out and upside down in the thriller, with the help of executive producer Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth). Chastain stars as Annabel, a tattooed punk rocker with jet-black hair who is living with Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau). Lucas’s brother goes off the deep end, killing his wife and abandoning his two young daughters, Victoria (Morgan McGarry) and Lilly (Maya and Sierra Dawe), in a cabin in the woods, where it turns out the girls are not quite so alone. Five years later, the girls are finally found, with Lucas fighting for custody with his dead sister-in-law’s sister, Jean (Jane Moffat), but Victoria (now played by Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) are more like animals than children, grunting, sniffing around, jumping around on all fours, and attacking at will. While Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) views this as a fascinating research project, Annabel is soon acting as mother to the girls — something completely unexpected, as the film begins with her rejoicing at a negative pregnancy test — but there’s something else lurking about that has a different kind of connection with Victoria and Lilly. Evoking such diverse works as Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-on: The Grudge, Alejandro Amenábar’s The Others, Richard Donner’s The Omen, François Truffaut’s The Wild Child, and even Jan Švankmajer’s Little Otik, Mama is filled with plenty of takes on horror film conventions, with Antonio Riestra’s camera lurking around doorways and closets and slipping under beds and Fernando Velázquez’s score exploding at carefully manipulated moments, trying to make the audience jump out of their seats. There are also glaring plot holes, stupid developments, and other problems, but Mama overcomes them with just enough surprising twists, a daring ending, and a strong lead performance by Chastain, who continues to show her impressive range. But the film is nearly stolen away by Nélisse, who is absolutely frightening as Lilly, a compelling, complex character that is liable to scare the hell out of you.