Mama

Hailed as a horror from the mind of geek favourite Guillermo del Toro, this Spanish-Canadian production is actually the debut of Andrés Muschietti. A pretty impressive coup to nab Jessica Chastain and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau. They portray surrogate parents for a pair of tragic girls whose parents' lives were cut horribly short in the pre-credits sequence, which sets up the premise concisely.

Victoria and Lilly, through a set of tense circumstances find themselves abandoned in a creepy cabin in a forest and spend the next five years growing up in the presence of some otherworldly spirit. Once they're found, they're put under the charge of their father's brother, Lucas (Coster-Waldau) and his punk-rock girlfriend Annabel (Chastain). Through more circumstances they find themselves raising the girls in an atypical home prone to creepy shenanigans as the girls' 'mama' seeks to stay in their lives no matter what.

Mama is a straight-up creepy kid genre movie, which you'll dig or not depending on how high creepy kids are on your taste level. It's interesting we've evolved from a generation raised on mean guys wielding claws for fingers and pins stuck on their faces, to this generation which is apparently wetting their pants over mopey little girls with unwashed hair.

In the film's defence, it's paced quite well with no unnecessary diversions. The film is most notable for progressing the story to its logical conclusion rather than selling out with a clichéd ending. As for the titular 'mama' itself, the big bad is unfortunately goofy. In an attempt to not make a terrifying monster, but one the girls would find comfort in, the filmmakers seem to have found an awkward middle-ground. The creature serves the story's purpose, which is fine, and the film makes good use of shadow and sound to depict it, but visually the CGI creation falls short.

Mama is a decent entry into the supernatural ghost story genre, not interested in mindlessly throwing gore in your face. Its ambition is to tell a rites of passage tale, and for that it deserves some cult love.