Movies
[Review] Scary and Original ‘Mama’ Destroyed By Lame CGI and Poor Characters
In a time where filmgoers are screaming for originality, Guillermo del Toro comes through with his latest production, Mama, directed by Andrés Muschietti. It’s a horror film loaded with great ideas and multiple scares, but it’s deflated by horrendous CGI and ridiculous exposition.
Mama opens with a disjointed voiceover explaining that a man (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) has gone crazy during the financial crisis. He returns home, murders his wife and then takes his two little girls to a remote cabin in the woods where, before he can shoot his daughter in the back of the head, a creature blasts out of the darkness and whisks him away. Five years later, this man’s brother, Jeffrey (also played by Coster-Waldau), has been paying two rednecks to try and find his missing family. They stumble onto the cabin where they find that the two girls have been surviving off cherries for all of those years. The first act is truly disturbing, focusing on these scary “feral” children who crawl around all creature-like. Things take a second act turn when it’s revealed that they were actually raised by someone they call “Mama”.
When Mama is focusing on the little girls, it’s quite chilling. But when everything shifts to their doctor and Jeffrey’s girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), it becomes bloated with exposition and unnecessary plot devices. Not to say that these elements couldn’t be compelling, they just suffer in the direction that Muschietti takes them. He’s so intent on wrapping everything up so perfectly that the proceedings become convoluted and straight up boring. Instead of propelling through scary scenes and ghostly pursuits, the audience is sung to sleep by investigations and unnecessary conflict (such as the girls’ aunt who wants custody).
It’s inexplicable why there’s so much CGI in a film where there are some insanely disturbing uses of practice effects (similar to The Ring). The effects work literally kills Mama, preventing her from being truly terrifying in a clear-cut case of “too much’. We see Mama way too much, there are too many effects shots in general, and for whatever reason Muschietti felt the need to have Mama performing acrobatics like bending backward off walls and twisting into inordinate shapes. Some of the most haunting and jump out of your seat scary moments are subtle and quick, not long-winded and showy.
And not taking anything away from Chastain, but her character is written and wardrobed into shambles. She’s typecast as a poor musician with a horrible wig and an attitude. Her character is so off-putting that it sinks the film’s believability into the abyss (even before the overuse of effects can do so).
The most disappointing aspect of Mama is that the original idea is fantastic, and some of the scares are out of this world effective. But ultimately poor writing, editorial, and effects decisions transform it into a long-winded, almost faux horror movie. It’s sad because most people won’t even notice they missed out on a better version of this admittedly cool concept. Even worse, Mama is a film I can actually recommend on some level, knowing that a hardcore horror fan could actually garner some enjoyment out of it once they concede to the fact that it’s an utter mess.
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
You must be logged in to post a comment.