With the exception of the first exquite five minutes and that point near the end of the film that mirrors the three-minute short of the same name, the most hair-raing thing about "Mama" is its tedious, protracted, cheesy expotion; zero ghostly atmosphere; forced, contrived plotting; dull, dull, dull cinematography; and ridiculously cheap CGI.
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Chastain who was fantastic in "Take Shelter" comes off tentative and at times completely unmoored in her punk rocker turned surrogate mother role. Coster-Waldau who tears up the screen in "Mama's" emotionally wrenching beginning is off stage most of the film; Kash's Dr. Dreyfull is just dead weight, a clunky drone; and the wild, Cirque Du Soleil little girls are often painful to watch as they pitch back and forth between mesmerizing and ridiculously unbelievable. And, yes, I agree with all the moth haters--what a cheap, cloying trick to help market a dismal film from the man who gave us such masterpieces as the "The Devil's Backbone" and "Pan's Labyrinth."
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If you haven't seen "Mama" yet, run the other way and rent "The Innkeepers", "The Woman in Black," "The Others," or "The Devil's Backbone," all of which sustain a gorgeous haunting narrative from beginning to end, are highly atmospheric, and have a spot-on cast.