Shudder Sunday: Mama

Director: Andy Muschietti

Year: 2013

Genre: Horror, Supernatural Thriller

Summary: Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who vanished the day that their mother was murdered by their father. When the girls are rescued years later from an abandoned cabin in the woods and taken in by their Uncle Luke and his girlfriend Annabel, the couple soon finds that someone or something still wants to tuck the little

girls in at night.

4/5 Pineapples

Review:

Mama is one of my personal favorites in the horror genre. Directed by Andy Muschietti (more recently known for his 2017 interpretation of IT), this film is a classic ghost story with a few original twists.

Let start with the facts.

"Andy Muschietti wrote and directed this 2008 Argentine short film titled Mamá that later went viral and got the attention of Guillermo del Toro. In 2013 a feature film version of this same concept was released with Andy Muschietti again directing and this time co-writing.

It is worth noting that the success of Mama has led to Andy Muschietti directing the Stephen King horror film “It” which currently has the one of the highest opening grosses for a movie in the year 2017" (The Fiction Story Room).

"The film earned $28,402,310 on its opening weekend, debuting at #1 and playing at 2,647 theaters. As of 4 April 2013, it grossed $146,428,180 worldwide and is a commercial success. Additionally, Jessica Chastain, for the second time in her career, claimed the top two spots of the box-office with her starring roles in Mama and Zero Dark Thirty'" (Wikipedia).

Despite the fact that this movie is great in my opinion, did well in the box office, is starring (the incredible) Jessica Chastain, and scored Muschietti his opportunity to direct IT in 2017, Mama only received a 6.2 out of 10 stars on IMDb and a 65% on Rotten Tomatoes. Everyone I've spoken to that has seen Mama seems to feel little enthusiasm about it, and many people haven't even seen it at all.

My point is, this film is under-appreciated.

Mama begins with the sound of a gun shot, fading from black to a haphazardly parked car with the drivers-side door ajar. A man (played by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau of HBO's Game of Thrones) clearly suffering from the peak of a mental break tells his two daughters to come with him to the car. He speeds down an icy, vacant highway attempting to grasp whats left of his sanity with his two young daughters in the back seat. He opens a pill bottle just to realize it's empty and becomes more upset. He's going too fast around a turn on the treacherous road and loses control of the vehicle.

In the next scene we see what appears to be the same man with longer hair, scrambling to get into the now abandoned home of - what we come to find is - his twin brother and two nieces.

Below the cliff that the father and his two daughters slid off of, the car is smashed head-first into a tree, but the three of them are mostly unharmed. The father, holding one daughter, Lily, and the hand of the older daughter, Victoria, walks aimlessly through the woods before stumbling upon a cabin. The air is frigid, so he decides to make a fire for the girls inside the abandoned cabin. In a small hall, away from the girls, he pulls a small gun from his pocket and contemplates killing himself.

"There's a woman outside. She's not touching the floor," says Victoria, who is looking out a large window in the living room area. Her father comes up behind her and removes her cracked glasses. Victoria asks why he's crying and he replies, "Cause I'm sad, honey. You know moms and dads, they try real hard. But sometimes they... they mess things up." Pause. "You know daddy loves you, right?" He turns her to face the window and pulls out his gun, aiming it at the back of her head. Shaking, he convinces himself to pull the trigger - but not before something comes up from behind him, lifts him in the air and break his neck.

Not knowing where her father went, and being unable to see much more than a blur, Victoria cuddles up next to Lilly in front of the fire for the remainder of the night.

Something unseen rolls them a few cherries to eat.

The title sequence of this film is fairly important in the way that it tells the little girls' story through their drawings on the walls of the decrepit cabin. In it's own way, it depicts the evolution of the two girls and how they've survived and grown in an abandoned home by themselves for several years.

5 years after the father killed his wife and abducted his children, we're in, his twin brother, Luke's small studio apartment. Luke's been searching for his nieces for 5 straight years with no signs of them.

His girlfriend, Annabel (played by my absolute favorite actress, Jessica Chastain. See also: Crimson Peak, Interstellar, The Help, and Zero Dark Thirty), is in the bathroom waiting on the results of a pregnancy test. The test comes up negative and she's ecstatic. She's not ready to be a mother, nor is she interested in being a mother.

She comes out of the bathroom, "guess who's not pregnant?!", but Luke just got off the phone with (I guess you would consider them) detectives. Luke's last payment didn't clear.

Luke is an artist and Annabel is in a band. It's been 5 years of searching with no results or signs that his nieces are even alive, and he's running out of money. Despite that fact, he refuses to give up on finding them.

Meanwhile, the two detectives that Luke was speaking with are halfheartedly searching some local woods with a bloodhound. They're pretty sure after all this time of coming up short that they're not going to find anything, when one man spots a crashed car.

They decide not to call Luke right away, but to further investigate. They pull out a stuffed animal from one of the missing daughters old rooms and give it to the bloodhound to sniff. The dog takes the scent and leads the two searchers. The bloodhound confidently sits when he's reached his destination, and the two men look past the dog to see the cabin.

The two men let themselves inside, being very silent and cautious. Searching the house, one man discovers that there are piles on piles of cherry pits in the kitchen. Something catches the man's eye and a girl, completely filthy, wearing rags and with a crown of flowers in her hair, is perched on all fours on top of the fridge. Another, smaller girl in a similar condition climbs up the counter and to the top of the fridge to be with the older one. One man asks the other, "can we call him now?"

Annabel is at band practice when Luke busts in to tell her, "they found them."

The girls are taken into the care of a psychologist, Dr. Dreyfuss, to identify just how 5 years without parents, education, and civilized means has effected them.

At the hospital, Luke goes in to greet the girls in a bedroom-like area with a two-way mirror (that's used so Dr. Dreyfuss can monitor them).

Luke enters and the two girls are very frightened and untrusting of him, but he places a new set of glasses for Victoria on one of the beds. She grabs them, slowly recognizing what they are, and puts them on. She's able to make out Luke's face and says, "Dad?" She grabs him in a desperate embrace, but he clarifies that he's not her dad, rather Uncle Luke.

Luke and Annabel are in a custody battle with Victoria and Lily's aunt Gene - who is presumably from their mother's side because she is super rude to Luke and Annabel.

I guess I'd be defensive too if the twin brother of the man that murdered my sister was fighting me for custody over my nieces... Hard bargain.

The court is favoring the idea of giving the girls to their aunt - because Luke and Annabel don't exactly have a stable living situation in their small apartment with their small income, but Dr. Dreyfuss helps Luke and Annabel out by sorting out a deal. So long as they stay in a super nice house that's monitored and regularly checked in on by the doctor to keep an eye on the recuperation of the girls, then they will be granted custody - which also gives Victoria and Lily's aunt visitation rights on Thursdays.

They accept the offer. Annabel quits her band. The four of them move into an American dream of a home together. Things get creepy.

Aside from some weird crawling the girls do down the hall in the middle of the night, playing tug of war with someone out of sight but clearly on ceiling-level, and a few strange stares from Lily, everything is pretty normal! Annabel is having a hard time connecting with the girls or knowing what her part/role is in this unique situation and Luke tries to be the cool uncle.

Until... one night Annabel and Luke are getting hot and heavy when she catches a glimpse of a figure in the doorway. She insists someone is in the house, so Luke goes searching around the house to make sure it's secure. He's convinced she's overreacting until he notices a strange dark crevice in the wall across the stairs. Moths start crawling out of it before arms burst forward to push Luke down the steps.

Luke is knocked unconscious and then hospitalized until he wakes up from his comatose. Annabel is left to mother children she never asked for, planned for, or wanted.

Things are super awkward back at the house. Annabel doesn't really know much about showing warmth and affection. Maybe she never got any as a child, but the point it, she and the girls don't get along well. On top of that, taking care of two feral girls is A LOT on a person. It is worth noting though that Victoria, being older, is much more open to the idea of living a normal life and accepting Annabel.

Annabel hears the girls singing a song in the middle of the night with what sounds like an older woman.

She finds Victoria in the bathroom crying because she can't get a jar open and she's frustrated. Annabel helps her and Victoria says she shouldn't because Victoria doesn't want Annabel to get hurt. When Annabel asks Victoria who would hurt her, Victoria tells her that Mama gets jealous. She looks toward the doorway and attempts to run out of the bathroom. Annabel grabs the tail of Victoria's robe, stopping her in her tracks. She asks Victoria, "What's wrong with you?", but Victoria tugs her robe string free and continues on her way.

Annabel tells Dr. Dreyfuss about all of these strange occurrences during his next visit. He's been using hypnosis therapy to perform a case study on Victoria. He has footage of Victoria singing the same song the girls were singing one night. And he has some theory that Victoria has a dissociative disorder and is taking on the role of Mama. When Victoria's asleep during her therapy, she mentions Mama and tells the story of what happened to her. When he asks how Victoria knows that, she says that Mama told her in a dream.

While Dr. Dreyfuss looks further into (their town) Clifton Forge's history for clues, Annabel and the girls continue life at home. All the while Dr. Dreyfuss is discovering more and more about a woman that escaped from an asylum in 1887 named Edith Brennan. He story matches that of Victoria's. A woman that's helping him dig up information on Edith Brennan leads him through a large warehouse of belongings that people never claimed throughout the years.

She says, "I'm not a religious person, but I do believe there is a place for human remains. And it's not on a shelf in a government building. Do you believe in ghosts?" To which the doctor replies, "I don't believe that I do."

She continues, "When a corpse is left out, the elements wither it, desiccate it, twisting it into a distorted figure that's barely recognizable as a human being. A ghost is an emotion bent out of shape. Condemned to repeat itself time and time again until it rights the wrong that was done." She hands him a box off a shelf. He asks, "What's this?"

She answers, "The wrong."

In the hospital, Luke has a dream of the silhouette of a man under a bridge, saying, "go to the cabin. Save my girls", and is woken from his coma.

In the midst of the every day chaos of raising two small children and the abnormal chaos of potentially housing a ghost-mother, Annabel forgets Victoria and Lily's aunts visiting day is Thursday. When their aunt Gene sees the girls she's alarmed by the amount of bruises they have on them, and you know, the fact that Lily is gnawing on a large glass orb of some sort - which is one of the more normal things Lily eats throughout this film, I might add. She makes a bold assumption off of Annabel's hardcore attitude and attire and decides to make a phone call to social services claiming she believes her nieces are being abused.

Whatta bitch.

Annabel and Luke are talking on the phone about her forgetting the date of their aunt's visit, and Luke is pretty upset that Annabel forgot. He says he'll be out of the hospital later that day though and he can take care of the girls, because "those girls are the most important thing in the world to me", to which Annabel responds, "nice".

Trouble in paradise.

Dr. Dreyfuss, grasping for connections of Edith Brennan to Victoria decides to take a hike to the cabin where the girls were found. The trip winds up taking all day and into the night. He goes into the cabin and has no source of light, so he uses his camera to see. Deep angry groans can be heard somewhere in the cabin while the doctor begins to use the flash of his camera in a panic.

Great cinematography choice that has since been copied by many other horror movies.

In the light of the camera flash we see Mama get closer and closer until she attacks the doctor.

Meanwhile, Annabel is asleep and having a nightmare of a woman from first-person perspective. In the dream, a woman stabs a nun to death and retrieves her baby from the nuns arms. She begins running and is suddenly running through the woods, cradling her baby, while being chased by a group of men with torches and pitchforks. She comes to a cliff, looks back at the angry mob, then down at her baby. Shaking, she covers the baby eyes and leaps off the edge. As she's falling she hits a large branch sticking out from the cliff. Her vision goes black from the impact, but when she opens her eyes again, her baby is no longer in her arms. She hits the water, and that's when Annabel wakes up. Or thinks she does, until something crawls up the side of her bed and Annabel takes a powerful turn in bed, lifting the blanket, and thus transitioning us back into her actual reality as she truly wakes up.

While that transition is hard to explain in words, it's beautifully executed on screen.

Annabel wakes up to see Victoria standing in the doorway looking underneath Annabel's bed. Annabel asks Victoria what's down there, and that's when we see Mama hanging on to the underside of the bed, which is how she was manipulating Annabel's dreams.

Lily had woken up in the middle of the night to Mama calling her from outside the window. Lily says, "Victoria. Mama." She tells Victoria to come with her, but Victoria replies, "Victoria stay."

This is a bold move from her because it shows her willingness to let go of Mama. For so long Mama took care of her and Lily, but Victoria is beginning to see Mama for what she truly is: a manipulative and negative entity in her life. Victoria is ready to move forward and live as normal of a life as she can with Annabel and her uncle Luke.

In the morning, Annabel goes to wake up the girls and notices that Lily isn't in her bed. She sees the open window and looks out. Lily is curled up under a pine tree in the front yard, shivering to death.

Annabel runs out, scoops her up, and cradles her to try and get her warm. Lily thrashes trying to get out of her grasp, but Annabel doesn't relent, knowing she needs to get Lily warm. She blows hot air on to Lily's small hands, and Lily is fascinated by the gesture - never having had a real, living, breathing, warm, human mother care for her before. And from that point on, Annabel and the girls seem to be on good terms.

Some other interesting things happen, like Annabel is cleaning up the girls' bedroom and we as an audience as well as Annabel are all pretty sure that Lily is hiding under a blanket in the corner of the room, until Victoria shouts, "Annabel! Breakfast is ready! Lily is hungry!" Then we see the blanket get pulled into the closet while Annabel has her back turned, still processing what Victoria said. She goes to look into the closet when Victoria comes to the doorway and tells her not to open it.

Annabel decides to have a one on one with Victoria about Mama. She asks if Victoria talks with Dr. Dreyfuss about Mama, and asks who Mama is. Victoria doesn't answer.

Thoroughly freaked out, Annabel calls Dr. Dreyfuss, but he's not answering. She finds Victoria's case file that he left the last time he was there and finds notes on whether or not she was responsive on recordings that the doctor took of Victoria's hypnotherapy. She also finds an old picture of a woman in a straight jacket.

This entices her to drive to the doctors office. She waits, but he never shows up, and the receptionist seems hysterically upset about something. Annabel decides to take a box of Victoria's case study information and the doctors laptop from his office and rush out of the building.

That night she opens the box of files to find a smaller box (the one given to the doctor by the woman from the government building earlier) inside along with a stack of paperwork. She sets the small box aside and begins watching the recordings of Victoria tell the story of Mama. It's the same story that Annabel dreamt of a woman in a hospital for sad people whose baby was taken from her, but she lost the baby. In the videos, Victoria says that Mama spent a long time looking for her missing baby before she found her and Lily in the cabin. Annabel finds more picture files on the doctors laptop of the woman in the straight jacket and also a picture of a cliff with a sort of swaddle of cloth hanging from a large branch off of it. Annabel looks at the smaller box sitting on the coffee table, making the connection as to what might be inside.

Luke, who is still at the hospital, for some reason still has all of the clues he held on to when he was searching for his nieces. While drawing the bridge and silhouette from his nightmare, he remembers and finds a picture that he had of a place called Wilson Pass that looks just like the bridge from his dream. As soon as he's discharged from the hospital he rents a car and heads in the direction of Wilson Pass. He stops the car once he's reached the bridge and gets out to walk in the direction of where the silhouette in his dream was pointing. And of course, it's getting dark out. Luke misses a call from Annabel. He tries to call her back, but it goes straight to voicemail.

Victoria finds Annabel crying in front of the laptop and asks Annabel if she's okay. Annabel says she's fine. Victoria gives her a hug and tells her goodnight, while Lily stands back, shaking her head. As Victoria walks away she tells Annabel, "I love you."

Uh-oh.

Outside, Aunt Gene pulls up, attempting to catch the family off guard and sneak some pictures of the "condition" the little girls are in.

Victoria wakes up to a few moths flying out of another dark crevice in the wall of their open bedroom closet. She wakes up Lily. The two of them tip-toe down the stairs. Annabel is still on the laptop with her headphones on. Victoria turns around to see that Lily is facing the living room. She says, "Lily. Lily, don't look at her", while the camera pans to the left from behind Lily to show us Mama spreading her arms toward Lily in the living room. Victoria gets out, "She's mad", before Mama lunges for the girls. They scream and retreat up the stairs.

This was one of the first films that I've ever seen where we meet the ghost of a ghost story face to face. The last 20 minutes of this film are upfront, not camera shy in the slightest, and so bizarre for a typical ghost story film!

The screaming startles Annabel and she follows the girls up the stairs to see what's wrong. Lily locked herself in her and Victoria's bedroom, leaving Annabel and Victoria out in the hallway.

They hear Lily scream and get into the bedroom to find Lily rocking in the middle of the room with her ears covered and her eyes squeezed shut. Mama crawls from the ceiling, distorting herself - much like Raegan in The Exorcist when she comes down the stairs upside down and backwards. Mama crawls like that toward the girls and Annabel who run down the hall to get away, but Annabel is stopped by Mama who pushes her to the ground and sinks her teeth between her shoulder blades, drawing the life from her.

Victoria yells, "Mama, stop it! You promised! Leave her alone!" which only infuriates Mama more. Mama lets out a frustrated groan before crawling toward Lily and Victoria. Mama pins Victoria against the wall and takes her glasses from her, crushing them in her long, gangly fingers.

Meanwhile their aunt makes her way inside through the back door. The sound of it distracts Mama from Victoria. Victoria tries to wake Annabel who is unconscious in the hall.

Their aunt, trying to quietly get pictures of anything that will give her custody of the children is taken aback by a head of hair on the floor sweeping it's way toward her. Startled, she remains frozen as the hair wraps itself around her ankles, before Mama's face emerges from the floor to kill the intruder.

The girls hear their aunt's scream and Victoria goes down the stairs to investigate. She goes toward a moaning sound coming from the kitchen to find her aunt Gene with her back toward her, twitching in odd ways. Victoria says, "Aunt Gene?" and she turns toward Victoria with a distorted face similar to what one might expect from a body undergoing rigor mortis. A moth flies from her head. Victoria screams.

Suddenly we're taken to another dream. This time it's of the swaddle-like cloth hanging from the branch off of the cliff, like in the picture we saw earlier on Dr. Dreyfuss's laptop. Then we see a woman floating in the water below, left their to decay. A gust of moths fly from her back just before Annabel wakes up in the hall of the house.

Weak and disoriented, she frantically searches the house for the girls, but they're nowhere to be found. Annabel decides to take the box of the baby remains and drive to Clifton Forge. She calls Luke on her drive and leaves him a message telling him where she's headed and that Mama's got the girls. On her way there, Luke jumps in front of the car to wave her down and get her attention. He says he got her message.

This is the only issue I have with the writing of this film. Why did we send Luke out into the woods by himself? He established nothing. And to jump in front of Annabel's car was just a cheap jump scare. But, back to all the great things about the film.

On their way to the cabin, Annabel gives Luke the rundown of who Mama is and what exactly is happening.

They find the cabin and let themselves inside. In the living room stands Gene's petrified body once again with her back toward us. As soon as Luke puts his hand on her shoulder, "Gene?", the corpse's joints relax and bend the carcass toward the ground in an unnatural way.

This is an unsettling sight that I can't say I've ever seen executed in any other film. Something about the way the corpse falls and the sound it makes - it's just brilliantly different.

With no sign of the girls inside the cabin, they go outside of it to find that there's a tall cliff north east of the back end of the house.

Annabel yells, "They're on the cliff!" and she and Luke run to the top. Upon sight, Luke yells, "Victoria! Lily!"

Mama emerges from below the cliff, floating and spreading her arms open to call Lily toward her. Lily walks toward her but Luke leaps to grab her before she walks off the cliff. Mama puts her hand on Luke's face and begins drawing the life from him when Annabel says, "Edith." Mama spots the bundle in Annabel's hand and draws closer to her. She reaches for the bundle, identifying it as her lost baby and cradles it. In a sorrowful relief Mama continues cradling the baby while walking back to the edge of the cliff. Mama uncovers the baby's face only to discover bones. She cries, and for the first time we see Mama as Edith. We see her not as a monster, but as a woman.

All is almost right in the world until Luke and Annabel begin walking away from the scene with the girls in their grasp and Lily screams, "Mama!"

This breaks Mama's trance. Overcome with rage once more, Mama becomes the ghostly creature we've been fearing the entire film. She chucks her baby's bones over the cliff and sinks into the ground only to sprite up in front of Luke and plunge her hand into his chest to attempt to withdraw his life from him once more. He faints, and then Mama lifts Annabel into the air, sinking her teeth into her shoulder. Lily reaches for Mama happily shouting, "Mama!" and Mama tosses Annabel to the side.

Victoria runs to Annabel's side. She's not dead or passed out, but very weak. Lily is now in Mama's arms and Victoria is telling Annabel goodbye as Mama puts her hand on Victoria's shoulder. The three of them begin walking toward the cliff as Annabel crawls after them, reaching for the girls. Mama turns to rest her hand on Annabel's head and induce sleep a few times, but Annabel keeps coming back.

She reaches one last time and catches the string on Victoria's robe, once again ceasing Victoria from going any further. Victoria lets go of Mama's hand. She's crying. Bewildered and sad, Mama gets down on her knees and wipes away Victoria's tears. Annabel wraps her arms around Victoria's legs, anchoring her. Victoria says goodbye to Mama and Mama begins walking toward the cliff still holding Lily's hand.

Lily says, "Victoria. Come. Mama." to which Victoria responds, "Victoria stay".

Mama and Lily walk closer to the edge of the cliff. Victoria reaches for Lily, not wanting to let her sister go, but Annabel keeps her on land. Mama holds Lily, floating over the edge of the cliff. She wraps Lily in a blanket of black fabric and pauses in their embrace for a moment before plunging toward the water.

On the way down, Mama and Lily are happy in each others arms. This time, when Mama hits the branch sticking from the side of the cliff, she and Lily burst into a collection of blue butterflies.

Crying, Victoria and Annabel hold each other. Luke wakes up from being unconscious. A blue butterfly lands on Victoria's finger. "Lily?", she asks.

The three of them hold each other on the edge of the cliff as the camera zooms out.

A blue butterfly flies toward us and the screen goes black.

Notes:

What I love about this film is beautiful execution of a traditional ghost story. Mama is your typical ghost who is essentially trapped in purgatory until she "rights the wrong that was done". There's a disturbing backstory, a solution, conflict, and resolution. I truly do not think that this story could have been resolves any better. Not many people expect main characters, especially children, to be compromised in the solution of a conflict in Hollywood pictures, so I feel that it was a bold and artistic choice to sacrifice Lily's character. The choice to do so ties any and all loose ends, making the time dedicated to watching the film well-spent and conclusive.

In terms of ghosts stories and other forms of horror, so many movies feed off of building suspense using the "fear of the unknown" tactic by never really showing us what's haunting the main characters. Typical horror films play on our doubt, making us question if there really is a ghost or if it's the character's imagination. Mama leaves nothing for the imagination, rather it builds suspense to reach a peak of paranoia without us having to guess what's around the corner. Instead, it has the creature face us, and lunge, crawl, and distort itself toward us on multiple occasions. When I saw this film in theatres, I was surprised to be presented with the ghost and meet her face to face as often as one does while watching this film.

I'm always surprised when I find that someone didn't like the CGI (computer-graphic imagery) that was used in Mama, but it's actually more common than not that I hear that opinion. This could be an attribute to the lower mid-range ratings.

A similar style of ghost can be found in both Crimson Peak and IT (2017), both of which I heard similar complaints about the CGI. I personally think that the style of ghost is original. Whenever I see it, I know Del Toro or Muschietti have something to do with it. I think having a unique signature style is important in any form of art.

Speaking of Guillermo Del Toro's other works, one who follows him - or even just paid attention to Mama in the slightest - may have noticed that he likes moths. Black moths are a symbol of death and are a bad omen. The color black is associated with mourning. All of these symbols correlate to Mama's story of her death and the loss of her child. Butterflies on the other hand symbolize rebirth and hope, so it makes sense that once Mama finds another child to fill the void and "right the wrong", Mama and Lily would burst into butterflies. While it may seem as though Lily died in the end of the film, I believe the butterfly that lands on Victoria is supposed to be a friendly reminder that though she is no longer among the living, she is not dead and doesn't need to be mourned for. Rather, the butterfly is a symbol of hope for Lily's new life with Mama. This is a life she chose and is happy with. Her life with Mama is one she can understand, that is a direct contrast to how she wasn't able to understand and adapt to in her life with Luke and Annabel. It's because of this symbolism that I believe the ending to Mama was beautifully wrapped up.

Lastly, I thought there were some notable uses of foreshadowing when Annabel stops Victoria from leaving the bathroom by grabbing her robe string and then again when Mama is trying to lead her off the cliff. And the use of foreshadowing again when Lily is telling Victoria to climb out of their bedroom window with her to see Mama, but Victoria decides to stay, which she does again as Lily is trying to convince Victoria is come with her and Mama off of the cliff.

Mama is ultimately a beautifully dark story with decent writing and exceptional cinematic execution.

So my question for you is, who gets the Mom of the Year award? Mama or Annabel? Both have their faults, but I'm curious to hear what you think!

Thanks for reading!