One thing we will need to clear up immediately: this is not Guillermo Del Toro’s new film. Remember way back when Juan Antonio Bayona released his latin supernatural shocker The Orphanage and it was also marketed to western audiences as quite literally ‘Guillermo Del Toro’s new movie’? -same story here.
In fact you only need to take a quick trip down Guillermo’s online CV at the IMDB to see that since The Orphanage days he’s gone big time enough to assert production credits on a whole host of released and upcoming films. Its great that this reputable horror film maker has hit the big time with such a splash, but there’s no excuse for marketing campaigns which pay sweet fuck all respect to the actual artist.
I’d better digress… the happy ending here is that Guillermo has looked into the short film of the same name (Mamá) originally put together in 2008, and decided it was so solid in quality that its creator (Andres Muschietti) deserves a budget and guidance developing the concept of Mama into a feature film.
Mamá plays with a considerably fresh horror concept, ripped from the headlines of the new millennium it deals primarily with the sickening criminal concepts of child abduction and particularly long-term abuse through neglect. With the rise of connectivity throughout the modern world its as though this hideous crime has come into contrast as a reality more than ever over the past decade. the Fritzl case in Austria being among the most disturbing examples (which incidentally went to court in 2008 close to the release of the original Mamá short).
Two girls have at long last been discovered by their desperately seeking aunt and uncle after having gone missing five years prior; miraculously the girls are physically unharmed and found imprisoned in a remote cabin. Servere neglect and isolation has taken a shocking and possibly irreversible psychological toll on them both and their immediate family are faced with the harrowing task of attempting to reintegrate them into a loving stable household. Naturally this leads to disturbingly feral defiance along the road to their rehabilitation, eventually give rise to a whole new dimension of supernatural suggestions.
In any case its shaping up to be a shiner. The film most notably stars Jessica Chastain (The Help, Lawless) and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jame Sister-Fucker Lannister) and is the debut feature film of afore mentioned director and creator of the original Mamá short, Andres Muschietti.
Stay tuned and keep up on your meds faithful Eruptors.
