Looking at the short film Mama (which can be seen on youtube), it’s easy to see why Guillermo Del Toro was so keen to be involved in its transformation into a full length feature. The short is essentially a scene in length in which two young girls are awakened in the middle of the night, terrified by some presence in their house. As they try to escape we see a strange, elongated figure the girls refer to as “Mama”. As a teaser, it’s intriguing and frightening. The fully realised film version takes the original idea from brother/sister duo Andres and Barbara Muschietti and adds in a healthy dose of fairytale to the horror.
On the day both their parents meet violent deaths, two very young sisters, Lilly and Victoria, find themselves alone and lost in a remote woodland cottage. As night falls, though it would appear they are not as alone as they thought – a ghostly presence called Mama is there to look after them. Three years later, the girls are found in a feral state and are taken in by their uncle Lucas (Nicolaj Coster-Waldau, with nothing much to do for most of the film) and his girlfriend Annabel (an effective Jessica Chastain); but Mama has come along with them and she is reluctant to let go of her children without a fight.
At first, the fingerprints of Del Toro can be seen all over Mama; his interest in re-telling fairytales to bring out their more sinister qualities, as well as the look of Mama herself. Performed by the preternaturally tall and thin actor Javier Botet (also seen in REC), the jerky movements and eerie physical presence recall several of Del Toro’s supernatural creatures from Pan’s Labyrinth. She is a great horror creation. The young actors (Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse) are similarly impressive. After they have been found in the forest, they are feral little creatures whose knack for showing up in unusual places provides some of the film’s best scares.
The law of diminishing returns is hard at work during Mama and as the action is ratcheted up towards a frankly weak ending, the scare factor gets somewhat lost. Still, while it holds onto its sinister fairytale roots, Mama is an enjoyable and spooky watch.