Mama

Starring: Jessica Chastain... and a bunch of other people I don't know
Directed by: Andres Muschietti
Rating: I Didn't Like It

A movie like this has one goal: creep my out.  It can do other things along the way, make me think about something in a new way, tell an engaging story, give little kids nightmares.  Regardless of anything else it does or doesn't do, though, its main goal is to scare me.  If it doesn't make that happen, it's not a winner.

Now, I'm a pretty well-educated horror movie aficionado, having started watching slasher films in my youth. I grew up with Jason Vorhees and Freddy Krueger.  I watched grotesque misuses of cinema like The Leprechaun and lots of straight to VHS garbage along the lines.  I've seen almost any series that has "massacre" in the title.  I've also wandered into the land of foreign horror films like High Tension and Audition.  With that in mind, it's hard for a movie to really scare me, but I can still be creeped out on a reasonable occasion.  Keeping that in mind, have a look at my rating of this movie above.

The Good:

• Even though I didn't find anything to be scary, all of the CG in the film looked pretty good.  With the way some films in this genre look today, that's always important.  
• The two young actresses in the film did a good job.  
• I'd never noticed how cute Chastain was before.  
• If the last bullet point I mentioned is actually making this list, it's time to move on...

The Bad: 

• This wasn't scary to me in the least.  
• I'm not sure that I even buy into the idea that opens the film and causes the father to run off with his two daughters.  
• The "horror" in this film kind of hits all at once and just hammers on you for the remainder of the movie.  There's not a lot of build up, and that's probably why it's lacking in the scare department.  

The Ugly: 

• I'll give the writers the feral child scenario.  I WON"T give them the short recovery time it took for the girls to get back to normal.  You don't create the mindset like that in a child quickly - it took several years in the film, and on the same hand, they don't recover from it quickly either.  
• I don't get the ending, and I think it's stupid.  I may sound like a little kid saying that, but that's how it is.  Get over it.  

If you want an honest opinion, don't even waste your time when this one hits a home release.