Editorials
Why ‘Mama’ Was a High Point For Modern Horror
As Andy Muschietti preps to adapt Stephen King’s It, let’s revisit his debut feature.
In less than three minutes, Andy Muschietti and sister Barbara Muschietti established themselves as forces to be reckoned with in the horror genre courtesy of the 2008 short film Mama. In the short, two young girls get out of bed and go downstairs to find a truly nightmarish entity in their home, and when he saw it, Guillermo del Toro was so impressed and terrified that he knew he had to help turn the simple concept into a feature. So he used his power to do just that.
Five years later, the del Toro-produced Mama opened in the top spot at the domestic box office, but three years after that, I can’t help but feel that the film has never quite gotten the respect it deserves from the horror crowd. And it deserves a whole lot of respect.
Dark even for a horror film, Mama begins in the wake of a man murdering his wife and business partners amid the financial crisis of 2008. Afterwards, he drives his two young daughters to a remote cabin where he intends on killing them too, but the horrific plan goes awry when a strange entity shows up and saves the girls. Several years later, the deceased man’s brother tracks down the sisters, who had been living in the woods all those years, and he and his girlfriend adopt them. Happy family, right? Not exactly. Because Mama wants the kids all for herself.
We eventually learn that “Mama” is the vengeful spirit of Edith Brennan, a mentally disturbed young woman who escaped an asylum in the 1800s and jumped to her death off a cliff, her own baby in her arms. As it turns out, the baby got caught on a branch on the way down, and so Edith entered the afterlife without her child in tow. After spending decades wandering the woods and looking for her baby, she came across sisters Victoria and Lilly, taking them under her wing as if they were her own.
And she’s not letting go without a fight.
Boiled down to its essence, I suppose you could call Mama a haunted house movie, but it’s because of the ambitious and emotionally-charged storytelling that it’s something more than just another spooky tale about just another haunted house. A custody battle by way of a supernatural horror film, Mama is primarily centered on the struggle between a living woman who doesn’t really want children and a dead woman who will stop at nothing to get them, and it’s this key idea that makes the film so very compelling.
On the living side, a pre-superstardom Jessica Chastain is Annabel, who has reluctantly agreed to play the mother role for feral sisters Victoria and Lilly. The character is immediately established as the sort of young woman who can’t even bear the thought of being a mother – in an early scene, Annabel’s day is made when she learns she’s not pregnant – making her the complete antithesis of everything Edith stood for in life and especially stands for in death. Annabel is a very interesting character for this sort of story, and her arc from budding rockstar to loving mother is the heart that beats at the center of the film.
And then there’s Edith Brennan, aka “Mama,” who is unquestionably one of the most unsettling horror villains to haunt the big screen in the past ten years. Looking more like a Xenomorph than a human being, Mama is visually stunning in the most nightmarish of ways, and that’s thanks in no small part to yet another creepy performance from Javier Botet. The distorted facial appliance, combined with Botet’s unnatural movements, proves to be the recipe for a tragic horror villain that will endure and continue to terrify for years to come. How many modern horror movies can stake that claim?
It sends chills up my spine just thinking about the sounds Mama makes.
If it feels like a traditional haunted house film during the second act, and indeed it does at times, Mama firmly establishes itself as the twisted fairytale it most definitely is when it comes time to wrap up the story. The finale, fittingly set on the edge of the very same cliff Edith jumped off of many years prior, boldly achieves a sort of fantastical beauty that calls to mind the work of both Tim Burton and Guillermo del Toro, and with it Muschietti proves that he’s a visionary filmmaker of the highest order. He’s also a filmmaker who’s not afraid to see a story through to its logical conclusion, no matter how dark he has to go in order to do that – the film ends with Mama grabbing Lilly and jumping off the cliff, ending her own pain and killing the young girl.
When Mama’s body literally explodes into hundreds of black moths upon impact, there’s simply no denying that Andy Muschietti’s debut feature is less a run-of-the-mill horror film and more a striking piece of dark art. In more ways than one, it’s quite unlike anything you’d ever expect to see in a Hollywood-made horror film, and though there may be some familiarity inherent to the proceedings, Mama is altogether the sort of creative and boldly original genre effort that us fans are so often begging for. Backed by a compelling story and full of genuinely terrifying imagery, it’s a gem that more than deserves a second look from those who maybe didn’t appreciate it the first time around – I know I didn’t, and I sure as hell do now.
If Mama is any indication, we’re all in for a real treat with Muschietti’s It.
The penultimate season of Tales from the Crypt (1989–1996) aired its first three episodes on October 31, so it’s understandable that at least one of those three stories is set on Halloween.
Sandwiched between “Let the Punishment Fit the Crime” (Russell Mulcahy, Ron Finley) and “Whirlpool” (Mick Garris, A. L. Katz & Gilbert Adler) is the most severe episode of the bunch. Maybe the entire series? William Malone and Dick Beebe’s “Only Skin Deep” traded the show’s typical sense of fun for startling amounts of bleakness and kink.
“Only Skin Deep” is, apart from the Crypt Keeper’s intro and outro, noticeably unfunny. There are no considerable attempts at making the viewer laugh. Come to think of it, if those bookends had been replaced, and there was more of a sci-fi element in the story, HBO could have easily squeezed this tale into that successor anthology, Perversions of Science (1997). In Crypt, though, “Only Skin Deep” is much too grim for an audience that had become accustomed to campiness and levity.
What makes “Only Skin Deep” feel dark, among other things, is its protagonist. Showing up to a Halloween party where he’s not welcome, and where his former girlfriend (Diane DiLasco) is attending, Carl Schlag (Peter Onorati) first comes across as your standard bitter ex. You soon realize it’s much worse than that, once Carl threatens Linda (“You know, silly me, thinking I gave you what you deserved. If I’d have done that, I’d have killed you”). Now, I haven’t forgotten that Tales from the Crypt was teeming with vile men who did women harm. Yet Carl’s brand of misogynistic menace hits differently—it borders on being too realistic for this kind of series.
Mike Vosburg’s EC-style comic cover for “Only Skin Deep”, as seen in the Tales from the Crypt episode.
Despite donning a party mask for much of the episode, Carl can’t ever mask his true nature. The invitation did say “come as you are”, after all. That inability to change and be better, however, is why Carl ends up in such a karmic predicament. His outburst of anger at the party attracts the attention of one loner partygoer named Molly (Sherrie Rose, who was also in Season Four’s “On a Deadman’s Chest”). Her bone-white, featureless “mask” and body-bag costume don’t initially register as too strange, especially on a night like this. But at a party chock-full of colorful, cartoonish, and lighthearted ensembles, it does look out of place.
Darkness attracts darkness as Carl ditches the party and accompanies the mysterious Molly to her place. Which, by the way, should have been an immediate red flag. But perhaps she’s so hot, he doesn’t seem to mind the serial killer aesthetic. Resembling a warehouse that has been converted into living spaces, but never then decorated to remove the cold, industrial look, Molly’s home (or lair) is as gloomy as this whole episode feels. It’s like the set of a grungy music video, albeit a tad cleaner. The environments in a typical Crypt episode tend to be small, overfilled, and broken-in. Warm, regardless of any weird goings-on. All that empty space in Molly’s hovel, on the other hand, elicits a creepy feeling that Carl was unwise to ignore.
Tales from the Crypt featured more sex than it didn’t, but hands down, “Only Skin Deep” boasts the steamiest scene in the show’s history. Pushing it over the line, in addition to Onorati showing bare buns and the camera never turning down one of his pelvic thrusts, is the twisted dirty talk. Carl stays in the moment, whereas Molly unleashes charged lines like “the hurt, the anger, give it to me” and “take it out on my flesh like you want to”. It’s all quite kinky, as well as tied into the story’s theme of pain.
How else “Only Skin Deep” differs from other episodes is its twists. Or rather, its lack thereof. Nothing comes as a great surprise here, particularly because the deuteragonist’s ulterior motives are so obvious. By no means is Molly a wolf in sheep’s clothing; her face is a fright mask, she practically reeks of death, and she lives in what can best be described as a serial killer’s hideout. That last-act revelation of Molly’s mask really being her face is also nothing shocking. Cleverness is certainly not this episode’s strength.
A page from “…Only Skin Deep!”, as seen in EC Comics’ Tales from the Crypt.
While “Only Skin Deep” isn’t the most universally loved episode of Tales from the Crypt, it’s an interesting preview of William Malone’s future as a director. Most notably, he went on to helm House on Haunted Hill (1999) and FeardotCom (2002), the former of which was co-written by Dick Beebe, this episode’s writer. Dark Castle Entertainment, that genre house founded by Crypt producers Joel Silver, Robert Zemeckis, and Gilbert Adler, was instrumental in bringing out Malone’s gruesome, over-the-top vision in House on Haunted Hill. However, FeardotCom and Malone’s Masters of Horror episode, “Fair-Haired Child”, are the most stylistically compatible with “Only Skin Deep”.
As one might guess, this episode is nothing like its source material. The “…Only Skin Deep!” found in the pages of EC Comics is set during Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and save for its last couple of pages, is pretty sweet in nature. There, a man named Herbert is enamored with a woman he met five years prior to the present-day story. Every year, he has come down to Mardi Gras to see Suzanne, who’s always dressed as a hag-faced witch. Well, this time, Herbert plans on popping the question and marrying someone who is, for the most part, a total stranger. Suzanne accepts his proposal, but with one condition: they stay in costume until they’re officially hitched. You can probably see where this is going…
Once they are married, Suzanne remains incognito, even when she and Herbert have consummated their vows. A semi-predictive nightmare then rattles Herbert; he dreamt that Suzanne’s real face was as wizened as her mask. Finally, in his haste to find out the truth, Herbert winds up killing his new wife. Faceless and well on her way to bleeding out, the dying Suzanne manages to say she never wore a mask.
For more traditional EC-style ghastliness, your best bet is reading the comic. It’s wickedly sad. For something less conventional, as far as Tales from the Crypt goes, the role-reversing adaptation is worth watching. It’s not the best this show had to offer, although Malone’s visual style, plus the sexual abandon, does set the episode apart. If nothing else, “Only Skin Deep” leaves an impression that, even years later, shows no signs of fading.
Season Six of Tales from the Crypt can be streamed on Shudder, starting on June 5.
Tales from Tales from the Crypt celebrates the show’s Shudder premiere by singling out one episode from each season. So don’t even think about changing that dial, boys and ghouls. More spot-“frights” are to come.
Carl discovers Molly’s collection of human ‘masks’ in the Tales from the Crypt episode, “Only Skin Deep”.
You must be logged in to post a comment.