Mama
Posted: Tue Mar 11, 2014 11:18 am
I am not a horror film fan. I actually hate them. But this movie really caught my attention. I thought it was much more subtle than the usual stuff. The story revolves around a ghost (of course) that saves the lives of two little girls whose father was about to murder them and commit suicide. The ghost raises the girls for 5 years in a cabin in the woods. Eventually the girls are discovered and brought home to an uncle. The one girl still has verbal skills but the baby, raised in the ghost world can't speak words. Eventually the ghost becomes jealous of the real world attention the children are getting and begins to lash out.
What really interested me was the photography. You (watcher) don't know there is a ghost. It's not clear in the beginning. And then there is a shot of the bedroom and the hallway. You see Lily (the youngest girl) in the bedroom come in and out of camera shot playing tug of war with someone. She is having a great time . Then in the distance of the shot you see the adult real life woman walk through the shot with a bag of laundry. So you assume Lily is playing with her sister. Then the older girl walks into the shot following the adult and suddenly you know that Lily is playing with someone else. At the end of the shot, Lily is shrieking happily as you see her lift up to the ceiling. And that's it. That's how you know there is a ghost.
Now the bad news. The CGI is awful, just awful. Something out of Disney's haunted house.
But it is still worth watching.
What really interested me was the photography. You (watcher) don't know there is a ghost. It's not clear in the beginning. And then there is a shot of the bedroom and the hallway. You see Lily (the youngest girl) in the bedroom come in and out of camera shot playing tug of war with someone. She is having a great time . Then in the distance of the shot you see the adult real life woman walk through the shot with a bag of laundry. So you assume Lily is playing with her sister. Then the older girl walks into the shot following the adult and suddenly you know that Lily is playing with someone else. At the end of the shot, Lily is shrieking happily as you see her lift up to the ceiling. And that's it. That's how you know there is a ghost.
Now the bad news. The CGI is awful, just awful. Something out of Disney's haunted house.
But it is still worth watching.
