Incannerax What a waste of my time!!!

Helllins It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Lachlan Coulson This is a gorgeous movie made by a gorgeous spirit.

Wyatt There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Prismark10 An investment banker Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coaster- Waldau) has a breakdown and kills his wife and two colleagues. He takes his two infant daughters to a cabin in the woods and plans to kill them but they are saved by some entity that protects the girls and raises them. They call her Mama.For five years the girls' uncle, Lucas (also Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau) has led a search for the girls and they are found in the cabin. Lucas faces a custody battle with the girl's grandmother but a doctor and a medical institute come to his assistance. Lucas raises them with his rock singer girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain.) When Lucas is hospitalised after an accident, Annabel reluctantly looks after the kids but Mama has been visiting the girls.The film is produced by Guillermo Del Toro and has elements of a dark twisted gothic fairy tale where things certainly go bump in the night. It is dark and creepy but by the end a little too dark as you cannot see what is going on. It probably is deliberate as the film literally falls of a cliff to a messy and stupid ending.

TheLittleSongbird This is meant in a genuine and not at all malicious way. 'Mama' is not a bad film. It's also (this is all personal opinion, not objective) not a great film. It very nearly was and its potential was enormous, but this is one of the most frustrating recent examples of films of two halves.'Mama' is absolutely great in the first half. It's genuinely unnerving with a good deal of suspense in the ambiance and build-ups, beautifully timed jolts and spine-tingling scares without resorting to cheap gratuitous gore to make their mark. There are many horror influences here but not in a cheap or predictable way, almost in an affectionate homage sort of way without it meaning to be. The titular character is an ominously creepy presence for most of the film, there is a real sense of danger lurking around the corner at any time. There is something very beautiful and poignant about the story-telling too, underneath the horror was something more than that with at first characters one could connect with and a vulnerable edge that comes over movingly.On the most part, 'Mama' looks good. It's suitably unsettling but also beautifully shot with creepy and audacious production design and splendidly macabre and sometimes inventive visuals. For the first half of the film, a lot of thought went into the visual effects. The direction from Andy Muschietti shows successful attempts at taking risks rather than over-blowing things or taking it too safe, there is a lot of visual panache and a seeming appreciation for film not just of the horror genre but in general (some of it actually almost thriller-like).Always look out for a good music score in film, being a musician and growing up in a musical family music is of great importance to me when watching film, television etc. 'Mama' has that, a lot of it is truly haunting while not being over-bearingly used.Jessica Chastain may not convince as a punk rocker but gives a performance of intensity, steel and vulnerability. Have noticed that both here and in Muschietti's latest film 'IT' that he brings the best out of child-acting, something that has wildly varied in film throughout history. Because 'Mama' is one of the finer recent examples of child acting that is remarkably mature, poised, natural, affecting and sometimes frightening. All of which achieved by Isabelle Nelisse and particularly Megan Charpentier. Daniel Kash makes the most of his problematic nearly pointless plot-device role, while Mama herself is voiced to unnerving effect and even more so in action with Javier Botet.Which is why it is such a pity that at the midway point 'Mama' feels like a different film altogether with a second half that brings things down. The scares become less frequent, the pace lacks its tautness, the dialogue gets confused and things start becoming predictable and contrived. Due to plot devices not properly followed through, things that don't add up sense-wise and some illogical character decisions.The less frequent the scares got, Mama also diminished in the scare factor and was almost cartoonish and the effects start to lack finesse. Nikolaj Coaster-Waldau does his best but he is used terribly to the point that he is nearly completely wasted, despite his role in the story being important it's not treated as importantly as ought and fairly indifferently done in execution.Faring least is the ending, which was unsatisfying on every level as has been said. It is just far too ridiculously outlandish, feels tacked on and it's also very vague in that it leaves questions without fully if at all answering them.In conclusion, great first half but really disappoints in the second with a slap-in-the-face ending. A small 6/10, was very torn in what to give it having been so disappointed with its unevenness but its good elements and the first half were so well done that being too hard on it was a no-no. Bethany Cox

NicholasMCG I am a huge fan of movies like Pan's Labyrinth and had medium-high hopes for Mama so that I bought it without having seen it in the theater first. Totally. Worth It. I loved the classic ghost story twist with a storyline involving a woman who wasn't your typical girlfriend and more interested in rocking out than being a step-mom to 2 feral children. I loved the set design, and felt shivers from my screen.... I LOVED the special effects and that one scene where the little girl is playing "tug a pillow" wow... That really got me. The ending I know has some people annoyed but for me it was satisfying and the only real way that everything that followed could be wrapped up. There could never be a happy ending here, but there could be some kind of closure. My only issue? The wig that Jessica Chastain had to wear. They could have done better by her.

Pozdnyshev Okay, so some guy goes nuts and shoots his wife. He takes his two daughters out to an abandoned cabin and is about to kill them, too, but is then stopped by a ghost who happens to be at the cabin. Great... Okay, so it was a ghost who was maybe unjustly murdered in a similar way. I can buy that.But then, even after paying some guys to look all over the place for his body, the guy's brother only finds this cabin (and the girls, who are still there) -- five years later. Really? It took you all that time? Okay, fine, whatever. So the girls are feral and apparently have been helped along by this mysterious, vengeful spirit which they call "Mama."The guy's brother, and his weird over-the-hill Goth girlfriend, agree to look after the children as they are rehabilitated with the help of a psychologist. Unfortunately, this spirit follows them.Cue faux-creepy dream sequences, jump scares, and the psychologist slowly uncovering the truth that The Supernatural Is Real. Turns out "Mama" is the ghost of some violently crazy lady in the nineteenth century who died while drowning a baby she stole from a local church. There is a dream sequence showing this which is genuinely disturbing, although in a disgusting snuff-film kind of way."Mama," predictably, wreaks havoc on everyone involved, including killing several people with more ease than a trained assassin. Call me a parapsychology nerd, but human ghosts generally do not have this kind of power. "Mama" slinks around and offs victims like a multi-dimensional Green Beret. This just makes it silly to me.The ending was just confusing. It's funny, everything about this movie was perfect except for the story. The acting, the photography, the music, and the editing was all incredibly seamless. But the story was bland and cookie-cutter, just another forgettable horror flick.