MAMA - I held off from seeing this for a while - I don't know why really, I suppose I had the idea in the back of my mind that a lot of genre fans had written it off as half baked. Anyway, I picked up a cheap copy from Cex the other day and gave it a half-hearted spin, fully anticipating a trudge into boredom. I didn't expect to find such a captivating film. I really liked 'Mama', which is basically a tale of maternal angst set within the confines of the post-Insidious latter day haunting subgenre. At its heart are two semi-feral children and their relationship with an otherworldly entity, a dynamic which gets complicated after the woodland-dwelling kids' rehabilitation and the arrival of a punk-rock surrogate mother... this all builds up to a climax which would've been heart wrenching had it not tipped over into slight tweeness in certain respects. 'Mama' has its flaws, but it really works in many ways - the pacing, the atmosphere, even the CGI which many have dissed, are all pretty much spot on, and, despite the presence of many of the standard moves that I guess come with the contemporary ghost movie package, there was something original about where it took its ideas about motherhood and attachment. I liked the omnipresence of moths and twisted, cocoon like forms - something about these and the (sometimes) foreboding atmosphere reminded me of Ramsey Campbell's fiction a little. All in all a great little film in my opinion and one that I highly recommend.
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