It doesn't come easy for makers of horror films. How many plot devices, after all, can one use to scare people? A vindictive ghostess, a spooky folk legend, or Sherlyn Chopra's Playboy photoshoot at the most. (In Vikram Bhatt's films you can add two extra angles: custard-smeared faces and Vikram Bhatt himself). Mama, on the other hand, has an interesting if recycled storyline. But the mediocrity of the thrills in the film leaves a lot to be desired.
The first of the film's positives is that it doesn't indulge in typical horror foreplay such as phony dream sequences and eerie stares from strangers on the road. Five minutes into the film, you get the first glimpse of the spirit in question. Also, the story centres around two orphaned girls who could really impart some ace acting skills to that overacting beach-ball shaped kid of Bhootnath. They hold fort with their innocent lisps as well as with their cold, empty gazes at the scariest moments on the film. Unfortunately, that's the best this film has to offer.
Mama is symbolic of the spirit of a mentally challenged woman who takes over the custody of two orphaned sisters after their bankrupt father leaves them in the woods to die. Their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his rocker girlfriend Anabel (Jessica Chastain who is even hotter than her tat sleeve) find them in terribly mutated conditions five years later and take them home. The rest of the story is as simplistic as one can fear: Mama still wants her babies. So she makes weird lullaby noises throughout the film, scares the hell out of poor Anabel, deals Lucas a coma, and bumps off a clueless doctor. Worst, the film ends in such a bizarre fashion you are only left contemplating why the girls' father waited five years before visiting his brother in a dream, asking him to rescue the same daughters he had himself once tried to kill.
