Ma Review
“Welcome to Ma’s.”
When a group of teenagers manage to persuade an odd but seemingly well-intentioned women to buy them alcohol, events quickly turn from strange to terrifying.
Ma is Octavia Spencer’s movie. She is able to present a Sue Ann who can switch from harmless to threatening, lonely to deranged, slightly awkward to wholly psychotic. The sympathy you feel for her is generated solely from Spencer’s performance; while the backstory shown provides context, it is only through her portrayal of the character that you allow this to colour your perspective of her. Spencer elevates Ma from being just another cheesy Blumhouse flop to something that is, if still far from being a masterpiece, an enjoyable enough thriller in the moment.
The film itself is done a disservice by its trailer. Ma is definitely more thriller than horror, and while it does have some scares, the core of the movie is figuring out Sue Ann’s motive and how far she’s willing to go for revenge. The climax of the film offers up some (mild) gore, but there’s an undeniable sense that Ma never goes to the lengths that it could. Nothing that shocking ever happens, and seasoned horror fans especially will be left deflated by the build-up of tension left unfulfilled. The most nail-biting moments of the film come relatively early on (such as when the teens first visit Sue-Ann’s basement), and while this level of tension is maintained, the film rarely ever builds upon it.
In fact, there’s more that the film fails to build upon other than its opportunity to scare. During the climax of the film, Sue Ann makes a reference to race as a motivation for her acts that goes largely unaddressed in the rest of the movie. It feels either as though this was a more important part of the film that was drastically cut down, or that the lines during the climax were thrown in last-minute. This is a shame, as including this story element more prominently would have only benefitted Ma.
Ma as a whole feels largely like a rush job. Continuity errors are normally relatively unimportant to the effectiveness of a film, but there is one in Ma which is so glaringly out of place it pulls you from the movie for a moment. It’s also clear from the ending that not enough time was given to developing characters other than Sue Ann. While the characters are all stock horror clichés, and don’t need that much more than they are given to provide the story with what it needs, there’s a definite lack of stakes in the ending due to their one-note characterisation.
Although it never delivers fully on its promise of scares, Ma can be a surprisingly funny film at times. The movie is able to monopolise on the pantomime effect of the audience being somewhat aware of Sue Ann’s underhand intentions, with every slight shift in facial expression or vocal tone from Spencer enough to create nervous laughs in uncomfortable scenes. Allison Janney as Sue Ann’s antagonistic boss also provides moments of levity, while also showing a build-up of frustration in the titular character you know will eventually burst.
Ma is never as good is it could have been. Dipping its toes into story elements that could make it stand out above the crowd, but refusing to ever dive in, Ma is a decent enough thriller, but nothing to get excited about. The movie’s one shining feature is Octavia Spencer, whose fantastically creepy performance will keep you anchored to a film you would have drifted off from otherwise.
2.5/5
