'Mama' Hit By Critics' Barbs

Mama, the new Guillermo del Toro-produced horror film, is offering up more confusion than scares, according to critics. It's the story of two girls who've been raised by a 100-year-old ghost for five years in a cabin in the woods after their father kills their mother and then "Mama" kills him. When the girls' uncle (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend (Jessica Chastain) locate the now-feral young children and take them home, they take home Mama too. It's quite the plot for a horror flick, and one that could have worked in subtler hands. Instead, director Andres Muschietti ends up relying on sub-par special effects and cheap jumps from loud bangs and interjecting music. Those who've seen the movie say that even the presence of the engaging Chastain isn't enough to distract from the fact that a lot just doesn't add up in Mama.

Horror movies are just about at the bottom of the cinematic barrel these days. In a year in which Alfred Hitchcock's eerie genius was memorialized twice – in an HBO made for TV movie with Sienna Miller and again on the big screen starring Anthony Hopkins, Helen Mirren and Scarlett Johansson – you're reminded that that's not always how it used to be. Horror films could have just as much depth and nuance as any other genre of film. “The contemporary horror film is like porn: effective, but soul-deadening,” wrote the Washington Post.

Critics were left scratching their heads leaving screenings of Mama. "Why is the creepy abandoned cabin in the Virginia woods … decked out in dusty 1970s furniture?," asked the Atlantic Wire's Richard Lawson. "And why does the camera linger on the name of the house, written on a little plaque outside, if the name plays no part in the rest of the movie? Is this all just spooky set-up with no real meaning behind it?"

Mama is not much about plot detail either, say the critics. "The frustration, though, is how much the movie leans on made-ya-jump scares and contrived plot devices when its quieter chills and already fraught setups are so potent," said the Boston Globe’s Tom Russo. Other burning questions include: How did no one locate the kids for five years in that cabin? How come there's not more caution in regard to the wild children? Why is Lucas being given custody when he's without a steady job? What keeps Mama from going after Lucas and Annabelle in the beginning, if she most likely killed all the others who came to find the children?

Mama opened in theaters on Friday. Check out the trailer below and judge for yourself: