Final Destination 2 (2003)

It surprising that three years passed before a sequel to Final Destination hit the screens, as the film earned over $55 million in the US box office.  New Line Cinema contacted screenwriter Jeffrey Reddick (who wrote the original story as a spec script for The X-Files) for ideas on where to take the sequel.  But with most of the original crew unavailable, stuntman turned director David R. Ellis (Cellular, Snakes on a Plane) was hired to shoot the sequel, from a script co-written by the team of J. Mackye Gruber and Eric Bress.    

The film opens as Kimberly (A. J. Cook) and her friends are preparing to leave for Daytona Beach for spring break.  While waiting to merge on the freeway, Kimberly has a premonition of a catastrophic traffic accident.  As with Alex in the first film, she begins to see events that will take place before the accident and blocks the off ramp to keep those behind her car from getting involved in the wreck.  Though she manages to keep the people behind her vehicle alive, Kimberly’s friends aren’t so lucky and die as a large truck smashes through her car.

This won't end well.

As the survivors are questioned at the local police station, one mentions the events on Flight 180, which happened exactly one year ago.  Dismissing the coincidental timing, the survivors consider themselves lucky for avoiding the disaster, at least until one of them dies in a freakish accident.

Convinced Death is coming for them as It did for the passengers of Flight 180, Kimberly to seek help from Clear Rivers (Ali Larter), the only living Flight 180 survivor, who has committed herself to a padded cell in a psychiatric ward.  Clear refuses to leave the safety of her padded cell, but as the death toll rises, she joins Kimberly in an attempt to break Death’s new cycle and, perhaps, taking herself off the list as well.

After several more freak accidents, the group discovers the course of their lives were altered by survivors of Flight 180 and Death is now cleaning up the mess created by Alex’s vision.  They’re only hope is to figure out the mysterious mortician’s (Tony Todd) vague statement about new life, which was not to be, nullifying Death’s new design.

So I guess I'm in the sequel, right?

Though the script contains a few nice character moments, these are quite brief.  Unlike the opening minutes in James Wong’s film, Kimberly barely interacts with her father.  Most of the other characters are various stereotypes, introduced only to keep the story moving, though this should be obvious when Kimberly and her girlfriend pick up the guys they are traveling with.  These two stoners are so out of place, compared to the girls, that it is obvious their inclusion is only so the scriptwriters can add in a gratuitous nude scene. 

It’s not to say the script doesn’t have has a few nice character moments, but the film is more intent on ramping up the gore and mayhem, and Ellis delivers on that count.  The opening accident is the best in the series, a jaw-dropping scene of vehicular carnage that might be the best car wreck ever staged for a movie.  And the ensuing death scenes are much more dramatic than the preceding film, with bodies being flattened, dismembered and impaled at a stunning pace.  And the effects, a combination of practical effects and CGI, still look sharp 10 years later.

Nope, I don't think a few stitches will help....

But the franchise starts tripping on its internal logic with this entry.  And, just to let you know, I’ll be spoiling the ending to both this film and the previous one, so consider a SPOILER ALERT in effect for the next four paragraphs.

The mortician tells the group that a new life, one that occurs because Death’s design was interrupted, might save the remaining survivors.  At first, Kimberly has visions suggesting a pregnant woman holds the key to their salvation.  But she soon discovers that the woman and her unborn child would have survived the initial accident without her intervention.  Recalling other visions, Kimberly believes her death, and resurrection, will end the carnage.  But this plot twist nullifies the ending of the original film, as Alex dies saving Clear, only to be revived off camera by the FBI agents. 

It could be argued that it wasn’t Alex’s turn to die (an idea that resurfaces later in the series), but the mortician never mentions that the new life has to occur at any particular place in Death’s new plan.  And the script offers no explanation for this discrepancy, as if the screenwriters didn’t pay close enough attention to the previous entry, or just hoped the audience would forget about that little point.

The link between this batch of survivors and the survivors of Flight 180 also seems a bit stretched.  Not that their back stories wouldn’t work, but it’s never explained why Death waited a full year to take them out at one time, rather than kill them in separate, smaller accidents.  Not only are the odds of everyone being in the same spot at the right time are pretty astronomical, but waiting so long before killing them would further disrupt Death’s master plan.  This new group is targeted because their interactions with the survivors of Flight 180 kept them alive, so one can only suspect how many other people’s fates were changed during past twelve months.

Exploring this wrinkle in the film’s final moments would make for a perfect lead into the next sequel, but the filmmakers settle for a splatstick moment that falls flat.  While the scene ties up a loose end from earlier in the film, the humor feels out of place and the buildup to the death, placing the final survivors in the right place at the right time, stretches believability to the breaking point.

Me, crazy?  What makes you think that?

Despite these quibbles, Final Destination 2 is my choice for the best entry in the series.  The opening disaster is amazing, the deaths come quick and Ellis is unafraid to splash blood across the screen.  And the action comes at such a pace that it’s easy to ignore the script’s shortcomings.

David Wong returns to the director’s chair in Final Destination 3, attempting to recapture the feelings of paranoia and tension he developed in the original.  But he also tries to match the amount of mayhem, blood and boobs Ellis delivered, and the mix doesn’t quite work.  And rather than dealing with a few minor flaws, the script delivers a few near fatal flaws in the opening disaster.  So strap in, keep your hands in the car at all times and get ready for rather dubious twists and turns.

Evil Dead (2013)

Sam Raimi’s The Evil Dead is one of the few modern horror classics that could use a decent remake.  As much as fans (like myself) love the film, as much as Raimi’s camera work continues to amaze audiences, the movie is pretty flawed and ripe for a reinterpretation. 

But Evil Dead is not that movie.

The film starts out with a prolog, as a man is coached on by a group of hillbillies (who look like rejects from another The Hills Have Eyes film) into burning his Deadite possessed daughter alive in order to free her soul.  The credits roll and we are introduced to a group of people arriving at an isolated cabin to help Mia (Jane Levy) kick her drug habit,  The group includes Mia’s brother, David (Shiloh Fernandez), his girlfriend Natalie (Elizabeth Blackmore) and two of Mia’s friends.  Olivia (Jessica Lucas) is an RN, planning to provide medical support to Mia, and Eric (Lou Taylor Pucci), a high school science teacher and old friend of David as well.

Events start going sour once the group discovers the cabin’s fruit cellar is full of dead cats and a burned post.  At this point, director Fede Alvarez decides the audience is too stupid to figure out this is the spot where the young woman was burned and inserts a needless flashback, even though the scene happened less than a half hour earlier.

The group finds the Book of the Dead and Eric gets to play the idiot who opens and reads from it, despite the warnings written across its pages.  Mia decides something creepy is happening and drives away from the cabin, only to meet up with a rapey patch of thorny vines and is impregnated by the force from the woods.  The others explain away her story, and her wounds, as the self-inflicted delusions of an addict experiencing DTs.  This gives the rainstorm time to flood the only road to civilization, trapping them in the cabin and allowing the unseen force try and devour their souls in order to unleash itself upon the rest of humanity.  And, as promised in the trailer, lots of gory mayhem ensues.

The stupidity of this group, and the script, is almost forgivable in the beginning.  Mia dumps her drugs down a well, in a ceremony that will ruin the water supply for everyone, yet no one seems concerned.  Olivia is convinced she can give the same care for Mia as a rehab center, despite being in the middle of the woods, isolated from any emergency medical facilities.  And one can forgive a science teacher for reading from the book, without suspecting that the demons written about would come to life.  And the script never explains why the hillbillies would leave such a dangerous book in someone’s cabin for others to find, or how the cabin has electricity without power lines running to it.

But these horror cliches are as forgivable, to a point, as a remake’s nods to the original material.  But unlike the best remakes (such as1988’s The Blob), Evil Dead goes nowhere new with those moments.  The scenes exist only to pander to fans of the original, which might have worked had the filmmakers not pulled moments from the two sequels as well as if the scriptwriters (Alvarez and Diablo Cody) want to include everything that made the series great.

Warning, the next two paragraphs contain some SPOILERS.

It’s a bad idea executed in a horrible fashion.  The possessed hand sequence would work in any film not titled Evil Dead, but Bruce Campbell’s amazing battle with his own limb in the original sequel makes the scene fall flat.  The fruit cellar floods, recalling the Pit Bitch moment in Army of Darkness, for no reason other than to include that iconic scene.  And once the sole survivor shoves their bloody stump into a chainsaw handle, it’s obvious the filmmakers are simply delivering more of the same, while trying to act fresh for newcomers. Such a strategy never works, as the fans will be disappointed in the over wrought winks and nods, while newer audience members won’t get the homage.

Yet the filmmakers decide this wasn't enough and crib bits off other horror films, in what feels like a desperate attempt to appeal to the fans.  Mia becomes the foul mouthed Regan from The Exorcist in several scenes, the Deadite possessed bodies move like they are extras from early 2000’s J-horror films, and the opening shot feels too much like Stanley Kurbrick’s The Shining to be effective in showing the cabin’s isolation.  This film is such a paint-by-numbers affair that I was squirming in my seat from boredom before the film was half over.

On the plus side, the effects look great.  Though Alvarez’s claim of not using CGI seems a bit overblown, as a few of the fire gags look computer enhanced, the blood and gore is all practical and is amazing work.  It’s nice to see a return to old school gore effects, but fans might wish it served a better film than this one.

By the time the credits finish up, and one of the people involved with the original gives their seal of approval, I suspect much of the audience is wondering why anyone would think this remake is so groovy.  Rather than trying to be original in any way, Evil Dead is nothing more than the equivalent of another kitten's photo on the web, asking the audience to like it without doing anything to earn such admiration other than appear onscreen.

Final Destination (2000)

At some point in life, everyone experiences a near death moment.  It might be as mundane as avoiding a car running a red light, or as dramatic as arriving late for an appointment to find the building engulfed in flames.  Whether you credit God’s intervention or sheer luck, one cannot deny the sense of relief felt after cheating the Grim Reaper.

The Final Destination franchise injects a evil twist into this universal experience, the idea that Death will not tolerate any deviation from the master plan.  Though the opportunity to comment on human mortality is obvious, the series is more interested showing how Death will rectify the situation, often with a nastier demise than the one avoided.  And the series delivers on that promise, though the thrills are often at the expense of the rules set up earlier in the franchise.  And this includes 2000’s Final Destination, as the finale breaks the rules set up in the opening acts.

Don't grab the towel!

The film starts as Alex Browning (Devon Sawa) prepares for his senior trip to France.  The film spends a lot of time (compared to the rest of the franchise) on character development, as Alex interactions with his caring parents and his best friend, Tod (Chad Donelly).  None of them notice Alex’s growing unease concerning the flight.  He’s not afraid of flying (at least no hint of this phobia is given in the script), but small events leading up to the plane’s departure like an airport reader board or a Muzak verion of a John Denver song, disturbs him for some reason. 

This feeling of dread culminates once Alex is in his seat, as he experiences a vivid premonition of the plane exploding during takeoff.  Jolting awaken as if from a nightmare, Alex begins experiencing events from his vision and tries to keep the plane from leaving the terminal.  All he succeeds in doing is preventing several students, and one teacher, from being on the plane when it explodes.

Told you so!

Alex’s prediction draws the attention of the FBI and ostracizes him from the rest of his class, including Tod.  The only person who will talk to him is Clear Waters (Ali Larter), who left the plane because of some unexplained link, which allowed her to experience the terror Alex experienced after his vision.

Soon, the survivors start dying in unexplained accidents, while Alex sees cryptic clues predicting each upcoming death.  Taking the advice of a local mortician (Tony Todd), who knows quite a bit about Death’s grand plan, Alex sets out to save the next victim in an attempt to break this new cycle of death.

I told her not to grab the towel.

The film sets up the template for the franchise, with a spectacular disaster followed by a series of deaths set in motion by events that would make Rube Goldberg proud.  And, by the middle of each film, the dwindling survivors work to prevent their impending demise.  But the film’s pacing set it apart from most of the other films in the franchise.  Co-writer/director James Wong delivers a slow first act, setting up Alex’s sense of isolation and paranoia after the plane crash.  And the slow burn continues, as we get several scenes with Alex and Clear that are more about building characters and atmosphere than moving the story to the next death scene.

The pacing gives the film more weight to this film compared to others in the series and might be a result of the script’s origin.  Written as a potential episode for The X-Files by Jeffery Reddick, the story was expanded into a feature film by Wong and his co-writing partner Glen Morgan, with the intent of the production serving as Wong’s directorial debut.  The sense of dread and paranoia is a perfect fit for the television series, and the two FBI agents are scaled back versions of Scully and Mulder.

But the story’s expansion to a feature film created a few problems.  The most glaring visual problem is the physical presence of Death. As a shadowy figure glimpsed by the victims before their death, its presence works fine.  However, the final act, which seems extended for a feature film, allows the physical presence of Death to be onscreen too long.  Not only are CG effects rather poor, even for the time, the figure never interacts with the environment, which further weakens the story.  Previous incidents imply an unseen hand setting events into motion, yet this spectral being just swoops about during the climax, trying to look scary without doing anything threatening.

Another problem involves Tod’s death, instigated after he slips on a puddle of water from a toilet that picks that moment to spring a leak.  After he dies, the water is drawn back into the toilet, as if Death is concerned about covering any evidence of its presence.  The scene is unnecessary, as Death left plenty of other traces that would lead any competent investigation to conclude the death was accidental.

Tony Todd as the creepy mortician

(SPOILER ALERT.  The next three paragraphs will discuss the film’s final act, so if you haven’t seen the film yet, you’ve been warned.)

But these complaints are minor, as the final act breaks the rules set up earlier in the movie.  Having failed at every attempt to keep the survivors alive, Alex realizes he is next and sets out to “death proof” a cabin near Clear’s house.  Yet he suddenly decides that he would not have changed his seat (as he did during and after his vision), which makes Clear the next victim.  And Death is already busy at Clear’s house, giving new meaning to the “act of God” insurance clause.

It’s an exciting sequence, but makes no sense.  Alex’s suspicion that he wouldn’t have changed seats isn’t supported by either his vision or the events that followed.  One could argue that the attack on Clear is a ruse to draw Alex out of his safe house, but the script never implies that Death is using Clear as a bait.  Alex almost drowns during his trek to Clear’s house, which nullifies that possibility since Death could have taken his life then.  Furthermore, the attempt on Clear’s life is just too intense to be a ruse.  Her death is a distinct possibility at several times and if the victims need to die in a specific order, such an attack would be a threat to Death’s design should Clear die.

The film does try to tie everything together at the end, as a survivor who avoided his second brush with Death is the victim of another freak accident.  But the final scene is more an attempt to leave open the possibility of a sequel, rather than close up any plot holes.

So, think I'll be back for the sequel? 

Despite these flaws, Final Destination is an enjoyable film.  The acting is solid (with only one painfully wooden performance) and the death scenes are an effective mix of practical and CG effects.  Also, several of the characters are named after genre filmmakers, a nice treat for fans, but one that might seem a bit presumptuous on the filmmaker’s part.  Naming one of the characters after Val Lewton invites comparisons to his work, and as fun as Final Destination is, it’s no Cat People or I Walk with a Zombie.

The franchise is off to a solid start, but a new director and writer will kick the series into high gear.  So buckle your seat belt and steer clear of logging trucks (rather difficult in the Pacific Northwest) as we take a look a Final Destination 2 next.   Beware, more mayhem, less story and more logic problems on the road ahead!

John Dies at the End (2011)

Okay, time for some full disclosure stuff.  I planned to have this review posted a bit earlier, as I went to the Portland premiere of John Dies at the End on Friday night.  But, a long week at work, combined with my early shifts and a couple of pints before entering The Hollywood Theatre, I incurred a series case of the head nods and dozed off during the final act.

So, you might expect this review to slam the film for being boring, but that’s not the case.  John Dies is fun, innovative and contained more interesting time travel moments than Looper.  And the film was so engaging, I had to see what I missed, so I returned to The Hollywood on Sunday afternoon and watched the entire film while awake.

Besides, I couldn’t write a review of a movie I didn’t see through till the end.  That would be wrong.

The film opens at a Chinese restaurant as David Wong (Chase Williamson) is telling the story of how he and his friend John (Rob Mayes) saved the world from an otherworldly invasion to a reporter (Paul Giamatti).  David is using a new drug called Soy Sauce, which gives a person incredible insight into reality and time traveling abilities.  But some of the users come back as breeding stock for beings from another dimension, and David wants to get the story out.

And that’s the plot.  It seems simple, yet director/screenwriter Don Coscarelli weaves together a tale full of seemingly nonsensical twists and turns that become clear as the movie progresses.  No stranger to dreamlike movies, Coscarelli’s Phantasm series has the same hallucinogenic feel as this film.  And, like Bubba Ho-Tep, the audience wants to believe the hero, no matter how much the surrounding characters, and the ensuing events, point out the fallacy of this belief.

The acting is very subdued and fits the story.  Williamson and Meyes come off like a couple of losers thrust into an adventure they can’t comprehend, let alone influence in any way, fitting the feel of the film and it’s overall conclusion.  The rest of the cast, including Doug Jones, Clancy Brown and Glynn Turman, keep a straight face throughout all the craziness, leading the audience questioning whether the story is just David’s bad trip.  Only Giamatti cuts loose, as the final resolution for his character’s arc allows for it, and makes perfect sense for whatever conclusion the audience come to concerning David’s tale.

But the genius of the film comes from the script (based on an e-novel by author David Wong), as the audience is given hints that David’s story is suspect and could be the results of a bad trip.  As events unfold, the script is always fuzzy on whether the events David is relating to the reporter are real or not.  And, as with Bubba Ho-Tep, Coscarelli doesn’t try to persuade the audience, but gives them enough to decide if the characters are true heroes or just seriously delusional.

As author Wong has written a sequel, This Book is Full of Spiders: Seriously Dude, Don’t Touch It, I want to believe David’s story, despite any hints that was all a bad trip.  It’s all in the hope Coscarelli will to make a follow up film and allow us to follow David on other world-saving, possibly hallucinated, adventure.  Because following him was much more fun than any financed Hollywood movie I've seen in a while.

Happy Birthday, George Romero!

I need to take a moment and wish George Romero a very happy birthday.  I'd like to say he was the person that hooked me on horror, but that's just not the case.  I was already a fan, but Dawn of the Dead changed my outlook on the genre.  Before that film, I was only into horror for the scares, for the unexpected, the jolt of adrenaline that comes from a good jump scare.  But Dawn showed me that horror films could be so much more.

My parents were rather strict when it came to the movies I watched.  I was born LONG before home video was even an idea, and I couldn't get into any R-rated horror film without a parent or guardian.  My mother would let me read anything, so I was devouring books like The Exorcist back in grade school, but I never got the experience adult horror films until I was 17 years old.

I missed the chance to see Dawn in the theaters (I was only 16, and the local theaters were very strict about the age requirements), but the 80s was a great time to be a young horror fan.  I was able to see countless horror films, from Evil Dead 2 to Zombie and several Corman classics in the theaters and loved every thrill.

But one day, I rented Dawn and my outlook on horror changed.  I bought a used copy, wore it out, bought another one, wore that one out, bought the DVD as soon as it was available, then got the four disc set.  And I keep watching it, at least once a year.  It's the movie I would want if I was lost on a deserted island.

I didn't get what the film was saying at first, as most of my horror experiences till that time were the cheap thrillers I watched on late night television.  But, even with my limited experience in critically dissecting horror movies, I knew the film was saying something.  And once I attended college, which allowed me to see beyond the superficial trappings of art, I understood what Romero was saying in the film.  Regardless of the buckets of blood, the spilled entrails, the gapping holes from bites into flesh, the movie had a message.  It was saying something about the evolving human experience, how our society works to change us and the consequences of such actions.  Over the years, each viewing seems to revel something new, as if Romero knew how societal influences would continue to assault us over thirty years later.

So happy birthday, Mr. Romero, and I can not thank you enough.  I hope this post doesn't suggest I'm degrading your other works.  I love Night, Day, Land and Diary, and Survival was quite fun.  Creepshow is a blast, Monkey Shines is pretty damn freaky and The Crazies is a horrific vision of the military industrial complex.  You've always pushed the edge of horror, but Dawn will always hold a special place in my heart.  You showed me that horror could have a meaning, a way to comment on the human condition.  And you did it with spilled entrails and lots of great, gory fun.  Bravo and, again, happy birthday.

Damn, that shot is still AWESOME!

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters (2013)

Given the title, Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters could have be a glorious slice of cheesy goodness.  But director Tommy Wirkola (best known to American audiences for Dead Snow) delivers a lazy, cliché-ridden movie saddled with a serious tone that sucks any sense of fun out of the story, despite a few moments of humor early on.

The story opens with a brief retelling of the classic fairy tale, but with one little twist:  Before pushing the witch into her oven, young Hansel and Gretel discover they are immune to spells, at least those cast at them.  And if you don’t think that will be important later, it’s obvious you missed the Harry Potter films.

After escaping from the Gingerbread House, the two become renowned witch hunters.  Soon, their journeys lead them to the German town of Augsberg, where, hired by the mayor, the siblings (Brett Renner and Gemma Arterton) start their investigation into the disappearance of eleven children by preventing Mina (Pihla Viitala) from being burned at the stake as a witch.  

This infuriates the local sheriff (Peter Stormare), who attempts to thwart their investigation, which complicates the sibling’s confrontation with the Grand Witch Muriel (Famke Janssen) and her plans to make her followers immune to fire.  And, of course, part of her plan involves Hansel and Gretel’s arrival in town. 

The film starts out with several moments of campy humor, giving one hope for a decent popcorn cruncher, including a vendor selling milk with drawings of the missing children tied to the bottles, and a geeky fan of the siblings played for laughs.  But any hope for a fun, campy film is dosed when the sheriff attempts to frame Mina as a witch. 

Sure, he’s an evil character and his attempt to undermine the witch hunters propels the story, but his motivations are never explained.  The script implies a power struggle between him and the mayor, but why he is willing to kill an innocent woman, and sacrifice the lives of the missing children, is never explained.  He’s just a cardboard character, one of many in this film, whose behavior lacks any motivation other than to move the story forward. 

But the cliché rut gets deeper.  To no one’s surprise, Hansel falls for Mina, who harbors a secret that is apparent within 10 minutes of her first appearance.  The film also introduces a troll named Edward (Derek Mears), who seems to be attracted to Gretel, yet is compelled to serve witches.  Yes, of all the troll names the filmmakers could have chosen, they went with the sparkly vampire one.  Yet the script never acknowledges it, despite any groans from the audience.    

At this point, it’s obvious a dark family secret will be discovered, Hansel will learn that some witches are good, (guess who; oh wait, it’s not a surprise) and Gretel will discover her mother’s heritage.  Oh, and Hansel has diabetes from eating all those sweets in the witch’s lair as a child, yet his daily injections become important only during the film’s climax.  Bet you didn’t see that one coming.

While all the characters and situations are cliché-ridden, Gretel takes the most abuse from the script.  In the beginning, she’s smart, sexy and a major ass kicker.  Yet midway through the film, she’s taken down by the sheriff and his men, despite holding her own with several more powerful witches earlier, and needs to be saved by Edward the troll.  Than, at film’s climax, she’s chained to a tree and must be save by another male character (her brother) before taking out a few witches.  While the script does explain her role in Muriel’s plans, it’s horrid that another capable female character ends up a damsel in distress.  Sure, the average filmgoer might not have found Renner chained to the tree as sexy as Arterton, but such a role reversal could have been fun and an interesting twist in an otherwise boring action film.

Most of the cast does what they can with their stereotypical roles.  Jenssen delivers a few delicious, campy moments when the script allows her, and Arterton is good at flipping from ass kicker to damsel in distress as the script dictates.  But I had a problem with Renner, who seemed rather bored with the role.  His character could have used more swagger and bravado, but he takes the easy route and plays it straight, coming off like he’s just interested in collecting a paycheck. 

And his performance echoes the main problem with the film.  No one has fun with the outrageous concept.  The action sequences are loud and wild, but lack the sense of goofiness that should infuse any scene involving a blessed Gatling gun taking out a coven of witches.  And if the filmmakers were hoping the R-rated violence would thrill the audience, most of the gore scenes are rather mundane.  Even the IMAX 3D format couldn’t infuse any excitement into the standard blood and guts thrown at the camera.

You might think I went into this film with high expectations, but that’s not true.  I went in with low expectations.  I wanted a Syfy Saturday night monster movie and this film couldn’t even meet those standards.  In fact, I think The Asylum would have done a better job with Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters.  Sure, the effects would have been awful and a few past-their-prime 80s stars would be in the cast, but that film would have been much more fun than this big budget failure.

Mama (2013)

Mama (2013)

Like most horror fans, I await any film with Guillermo del Toro’s name attached to it.  The man knows and loves the genre and has a deep respect for its fans.  So I went into Mama wanting to love the film.  But the film is too bloated with pointless scenes, superficial characters and cheap jump scares to develop any suspense or fear.

The film during the recent stock market collapse, after Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who’s firm is suffering heavy losses, shoots several people at his office.  He flees to the home of his estranged wife, kills her and drives off with their two daughters, Victoria and Lilly.

On a ice covered mountain pass, Jeffrey loses control of the car, which goes off the road.  The three survive the crash, and Jeffrey leads his daughters to an abandoned cabin.  Unable to deal with the collapse of his world, Jeffrey plans to shoot the girls, but a spectral figure kills him before he can pull the trigger.

The film’s credits start, playing over a series of drawings (which, we find out later, cover the cabin’s walls) as the girls change over the ensuing years.  Lilly, just a baby at the time of the crash, becomes feral, walking on all fours, and Victoria soon follows her younger sister.  It’s one of the more effective scenes in the movie, and perfect for setting up the rest of the story.

Cut to five years later, as a search party funded by Jeffrey’s brother, Lucas (Coster-Waldau in a dual role), finds Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse) living like wild animals in the cabin.  Lucas attempts to gain custody of the girls, but their aunt Jean (Jane Moffat) challenges him in court. 

Docter Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash), the psychologist in charge of the girls, tells Lucas that he is inclined to side with Jean.  He doesn’t feel the lifestyle led by Lucas and his rock musician girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) would be a suitable environment for the girls.  But Dreyfuss offers to side with Lucas, and allow them access to a house owned by his clinic, in exchange for continued access to the girls.  Lucas agrees, and he and a reluctant Annabel set up a home for Victoria and Lilly. 

But they are unaware that Mama has followed them, and she is very jealous of anyone trying to take the girls from her.  Lucas is attacked and put in a coma, forcing Annabel to take over parenting duties, fend off Jean’s attempts to gain custody and, in time, keep the girls from Mama’s grasp.

The acting in the film is solid.  Charpentier and Nélisse are terrific and it’s easy to believe both their feral behavior (obviously enhanced by make up and CGI) and their slow progression back to a more human state.  All the adult actors are quite good as well.  And the fact that Chastain isn’t glamorized makes the character more realistic than if she looked like a Hollywood starlet playing a musician.

It would be easy to blame the film’s failure on several rather shabby CGI effects (don’t get me started with the hair crawling on the floor; a robotic floor sweeper with a wig on it would look scarier), it’s the script, written by Neil Cross, director Andrés Muschietti and his sister Barbara Muschietti, that causes dooms the movie.  Though the story has potential, the screenplay needed another rewrite to tighten things up and flesh out the main characters and maybe write out others.

The weakest link in the film turns out to be Annabel.  In her first appearance is when she is celebrating a negative pregnancy test.  Annabel doesn’t want to be a mother, though she takes on the role because of her love for Lucas.  That aspect of her character works, but her transition from reluctant parent to caring mother never feels real.  The script makes no attempt to show why the audience should believe Annabel’s change, or why she would form such a strong bond with Victoria, other than this development is needed to move the story forward.

The script never explains what motivated Lucas to spend so much money to continue the search for his brother and nieces, or why he’d risk his relationship with Annabel to care for two feral children.  Yes, they are relatives, but they’ve also lived like animals for five years.  Why Lucas would want custody, or that any court would believe that a normal home environment would be best for the girls, is never answered.

The secondary characters are little more than evil stereotypes written into the script to provide dramatic conflict and for Mama to attack.  It is obvious Dreyfuss is more interested in his research than the girl’s well being, though his true motivation isn’t reveled until later in the film.  And Jean is little more than an evil, rich relative wanting to keep the girls from Lucas for no discernable reason.  The character has no impact upon the story and the film might have been stronger had she been written out of the script.

And by reveling Mama too soon, director Muschietti hobbles the film.  The audience knows Mama is a supernatural force when she stops Jeffrey from killing Victoria, but keeping her unseen would have helped the script.  First, not reveling Mama as a spirit would have been a terrific red herring.  No one questions how Victoria survived, let alone kept her sister alive, for five years in the Northwest wilderness.  If Muschietti had led the audience to believe Mama was human, perhaps a crazed hermit living in the woods, who helped the girls survive, the film might have generate more suspense playing the low key creepy moments in the film.  And the eventual revel of Mama’s true form would have delivered quite an impact.  But, as Mama is shown to be supernatural during the opening scenes, the audience can only wait for the inevitable appearance of her spectral CGI form in an endless parade of jump scares.

That’s not to say the film isn’t without some truly spooky moments.  The playful tug of war scene with Lilly and an unseen opponent, blocked from the audience’s view by a wall, is creepy.  And a few other moments are rather unsettling, but these scenes are overpowered by too many jump scares and pointless dream sequences.  And several of these moments seem added on, as if the CGI effects were added at the last minute to try punching up the tension.

I hate calling Mama a failure, as it could have been the creepy little fairy tale it aspired to be.  But the film’s effective moments are too few, and the script stumbles too often for the audience to become invested in either the characters or the story.  And though it’s easy to make filmgoers jump with a CGI ghost scare, it doesn’t mean they’ll have fond memories of the movie after they leave the theater.