"Mama" (2013)

The goal of great horror is to make the audience think. If it is really great it will disturb audiences by causing them to think about the world in ways they haven’t before, by pointing out things in society or in the sinful human condition that we ignored or never noticed. If it is scary, it is because of all the implications for our daily lives.

But then there is also the simply, scary story. Even if they are not great, they cn be well-done and in their own way they can be fun. However, it seems as though filmmakers are losing the ability to do this sort of atmospheric film anymore. That ability seems to have subsided as computer generated effects have fooled people into thinking something they could show is any better than audiences’ imaginations.

A case in point is this year’s laughably silly “Mama.” Based on an effectively chilling short from a few years ago (posted bellow, but be warned it could be scary) “Mama” attempts to treat the idea of a ghostly mother-figure haunting a couple children in a feature-length format. It ends up being a silly series of creepy scenarios built around a silly plot that no one cares about. It is an attempt to string together a series of computer generated scares with no point beyond jumps.

What’s worse is it chooses to end on the trendy downer, nihilistic type of ending that is so popular these days with no idea what sort of message it wants to deliver.