Mama

You don't have to be highly impressionable to get a shriek or two out of Mama, but it would help, and I suppose there are filmgoers who may never look at walls in quite the same way again. Elegantly shot and boasting Oscar hopeful Jessica Chastain in Joan Jett-like form as an imperilled hipster, the movie goes heavy on portentous sound effects and creepy-crawlies. What it lacks pretty much entirely is common sense. 

On the other hand, who submits to such genre pictures for logic? The whole point of director Andy Muschietti's movie is to trot out a time-honoured arsenal of horror film tropes, whether they be things that go bump or thud or pack an equivalent "boo" effect or moments intended to bring out the best panto-season spirit in a post-Christmas public. I lost track of the numbers of times I wanted to shout, "Don't open that door!"

The best celluloid shockers tap into something primal in the psyche that rattles the nerves well after the final credits, which is why Psycho remains, well, the mama of all that have followed in its nerve-jangling wake. Mama flirts with such terrain in its depiction of a familial breakdown that leads to the emergence of the two feral young girls (the eldest, Megan Charpentier, pictured above) who end up in a tattooed Chastain's reluctant care. 

In purely psychological terms, the scariest passage is the opener, in which a father at the end of his financial tether threatens grievous harm toward his two daughters only to bundle them into the car for a crazed ride that proves fatal to him, if not to his children. Flash forward five years and the girls are discovered alive though not especially well and in need of some sort of re-absorption into domestic life. Enter the dead father's brother, Lucas (both men are played, very well, by Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from TV's Game of Thrones), and girlfriend Annabel (Chastain), who are provided with a special house in which to play would-be parents to two clearly disturbed patients in need of care.

Suffice it to say that mum turns out to be no match for Mama, though the latter (pictured left) numbers among the bendier, more supple agents of terror to emerge in many a year.

Sceptics may tire of dialogue that mixes the pretentious ("A ghost is an emotion bent out of shape" - um, thanks) with one too many uses of "You okay?" (If the answer were yes, there would be no film.) And the finish gives newly literal meaning to the notion of a cliffhanger. On the plus side, the largely monochrome camerawork makes a virtue of colorlessness, and an unexpectedly cast Chastain suggests early Liza Minnelli (think The Sterile Cuckoo or thereabouts) updated to an era of indie rockers who have "fuck you" stored on their Ansaphone. What is Annabel's reply when Mama comes calling? I couldn't possibly say beyond revealing that the final "Are you okay?" is asked not of the kids but of Annabel herself. Is that a cue for Mama 2? 

Watch the trailer for Mama