LA MADRE

A man, after killing his wife, takes his two daughters and flees into the forest by car. The vehicle, however, goes off the road and the man is forced to seek shelter with the girls in an abandoned cabin. But something emerges from the darkness and kills the man. For five years there is no trace of the girls who disappeared in the forest, but their uncle Lucas never gave up and, together with his partner Annabel, set up a search team to find Victoria and Lilly. One day, the two girls are finally found miraculously alive, although dirty, malnourished, and feral. Lucas offers to be their guardian, even though Annabel is not too enthusiastic about the idea, but someone, perhaps a supernatural being, follows the girls to the new house, the same being that over these five years has protected and fed them and that proves to be particularly possessive towards "his" girls. "A mother's love is forever", reads the tagline of the film "Mama", immediately framing what the central theme of the film is: maternal love. We all know how important the presence of parents is for a child's upbringing and the relationship they weave with them, and as for the mother, let's not even talk about it, a typical figure for the assumption of a fundamental filial imprinting for the early formative phases of the individual. And it is curious to note the way in which cinema # and horror cinema in particular # has always been committed to defining the parent/child relationship and especially mothers/children in a particularly in-depth manner. Whether it is degenerate mothers suffering from Medea Syndrome or loving mothers who would do anything to protect their offspring, cinema is full of them: affectionate, possessive, wicked, jealous, libertine, protective. These are the mothers. Andy Muschietti, a young Argentine director of commercials, in 2008 directs and writes, together with his sister Barbara, a short film of just 3 minutes titled "Mama" (you can watch it at the end of the article) that with its explanatory title already aims to frame a singular interaction between mother and daughters, only in this case the mother is a terrifying ghost that hunts the girls inside their home. From this very short but intense short film, Guillermo Del Toro wanted to draw a feature-length film, finding terrifying potential in Muschietti's work. Del Toro was right, because the film that was entrusted to the same director of the short, achieved excellent results at the box office and collected a series of positive reviews that made it a bit of the horror revelation of the season. In "Mama", Muschietti, who also collaborated on the script together with his sister and television writer Neil Cross, managed to incorporate all those facets of maternal love we were talking about earlier, building a completely new story that includes the original short in a climactic scene inserted in the second half of the film. The mother of the title is thus a loving and protective "parent", thanks to whom two girls manage to survive the dangers of the forest for five whole years, but she is also morbidly possessive and jealous, to the point of harming anyone who dares to take her treasures away, as well as a ruthless killer because ready to die as long as this allows her to stay close to her loved ones. By combining in a single successful character all the facets # positive and negative # that a mother can possess, Muschietti has brought to life a terrifying and complex "boogeyman" that will surely not leave the audience indifferent. If the motivations of this "monster" # embodied by the actor Javier Botet, who also gave life to the "final boss" of "[REC]" # may remind us of those of The Woman in Black from the recent "The Woman in Black", her unsettling look, which the director says inspired by Modigliani's paintings, is a mix between the Tooth Fairy from "Fright Night" and Kayako from the series "The Grudge", appearing as a potential new icon for horror cinema. From Eastern horror, Muschietti really takes a lot and not just for the iconography of the ghost, since many times his way of appearing and moving reminds us of the J-horror that raged on the screens of half the world a few years ago and the mold stain on the wall, which functions as a portal for the Mother, comes straight from Hideo Nakata's "Dark Water." Nothing new under the moonlight, you will say, and in part it is true, since "Mama" wallows in clichés and a certain iconographic familiarity of cinematic horror, and yet Muschietti's film has bite, involves, and remains well etched in the viewer's mind. You can notice Del Toro's hand, who, despite limiting himself to executive production, may have influenced the operation more than necessary. "Mama" indeed has that dark fairy tale setting that characterizes many films by the director of "Pan's Labyrinth" and some of his recent productions ("The Orphanage" and "Don't Be Afraid of the Dark"), strongly linking the story to the child dimension and putting children at the center of the plot. In this specific case, we have two little sisters, Victoria and Lilly, played by the very talented Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nélisse, who, following the fairy tale tradition, enter the forest, go into the "gingerbread house" and meet the witch. Only this time, the witch, although potentially terrifying to a child's eyes, does not want to kill or eat them, but rather protect and raise them. It is the maternal instinct that prevails, that repressed and denied instinct that characterizes the Mother character and that will lead to inevitable dramatic consequences, with a touching epilogue that aims straight at the viewer's feelings. But "Mama" also has another soul that distances itself from the more properly Del Torian one and concerns the psychological and human journey that the two girls and the acquired aunt Annabel have to face. The girls are shown at the beginning as if they came out of a Jack Ketchum novel, two little animal-like creatures that move quickly on all fours, growl, bite, and scratch. If it is easier for Victoria to return to civilization, for the younger Lilly it is a real educational odyssey and for her # who sleeps on the ground and eats like an animal # only the figure of the Mother is a synonym of security and joy. For Annabel, who is played by the always magnificent Jessica Chastain ("Lawless"; "Zero Dark Thirty"), it is hard to suddenly find herself acting as a mother, she who plays in a rock band and when she sees a negative pregnancy test sighs with relief. Amidst all this, there is excellent management of tension, with countless moments of effective fright and a good hold on the atmosphere, which makes its own a constant and oppressive funeral air. The only criticisms can be directed at a sometimes invasive use of computer graphics and an excessive display of the "monster" in the second part of the film that, although well-made, works better when it remains in the shadows. A new monster has entered the horror viewer's imagination, her name is Mama and she seems already ready to return in a sequel! Add half a pumpkin. Watch the short MAMA'