A scene from new film Mama. Source: Supplied
MOVIE REVIEW: The great Jessica Chastain (Zero Dark Thirty) might have top billing here, but she does not have the title role.
Though Chastain's character is a woman entrusted with the care of two small girls, administering proper parental guidance is not her strong suit.
For the past five years, young Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) have been missing, presumed dead.
During that time - spent in hiding in the woods with a fugitive father - the kids have been reared by a spooky spectral presence they call Mama.
A return to the ways of the real world is going to be difficult. And not just because they now have to answer to their uncle's live-in girlfriend Amanda (Chastain).
A bass player in a goth-rock outfit - she has tattoos, too much mascara and is too cool for school in general - Amanda will never take the place of Mama.
Especially once Mama discovers her former charges' new address, and begins turning up the paranormal heat on all who live there.
Are you scared yet? Probably not. Doesn't matter. As a movie, Mama isn't keen to manufacture the short, sharp, shiftily-edited shocks most other modern horror flicks churn out by rote.
Instead, first-time director Andres Muschietti is out to subtly unsettle (and often, just as subtly amuse) his audience with the suggestion of menace, rather than an all-too-literal depiction of all hell breaking loose.
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Mama [M]
Rating: 3/5
Director: Andy Muschietti (feature debut)
Starring: Jessica Chastain, Megan Charpantier, Isabelle Nelisse, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau
"Parental guidance recommended, but impossible"
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