Mama (2013, Andres Muschietti)

I wasn't expecting great things from "Mama". The trailer made it look like your run-of-the-mill contemporary horror film about a ghostly, child-snatching 'entity'. That's precisely what it is, despite having heard some positive remarks about it being something different. Nope. Just you're typical, dime-a-dozen supernatural flick...

A guy goes berserk and kills some co-workers, then his wife before hauling his two very young daughters off. While driving fast down a winding, snowy road, he spins out and skids down a hill, wrecking the car. He takes the girls out into the woods where he finds a cabin. Later, just as he's about to do "the unthinkable", something "spooky" pulls him away and he disappears. Cut to five years later and the girls are found still living on their own in the cabin, though at this point they've totally capitulated to animal-like temperaments. Their uncle and his rock musician girlfriend agree to take them in and it soon becomes apparent that the girls weren't alone during their 5 year survival in the woods. The ghost of a woman who leaped off a cliff with her baby years ago has followed them to their new home and she's jealous of their new guardians...

To be fair, "Mama" isn't a BAD flick and certainly not one of the worst of it's kind to come out in recent years - it just so happens to follow that same ol' 'formula' much too closely. A witchy looking, stringy-haired ghost, troubled children in jeopardy, and CGI water stains growing in walls. I feel like I've seen that water stain thing in SO many movies lately! Also, why do ghosts always have to fucking ROAR like Godzilla these days? Seriously, EVERYTHING roars in modern horror films and it's not creepy! Remember how many ghosts in Kubrick's "The Shining" roared? Not a single goddamned one! Enough with the roaring ghosts used to induce bullshit 'jump scares'. It's ridiculous.

Anyway, the ghost woman is completely CGI, though she looks okay sometimes. Other times, she looks completely retarded and too over-the-top 'monstrous'. The storyline was a little on the "bland" side and there were way too many scenes that felt aimless and moved along at a snails pace. The climax was especially drawn out.

Like I said, there are MUCH worse examples of this current "style" of supernatural horror film, but there's just nothing about "Mama" that sets it apart from so many other familiar movies of it's kind. I mean, after some other VERY recent theatrical flicks such as "The Woman in Black" and "Sinister" - also about child-abducting ethereal beings - I'm really getting burned out on this type of shit...