Mama is a 2013 horror film co-written and directed by Andres Muschietti.   Mama was released in the United States on January 18, 2013.  It tells the story of  two sisters, Lily (Isabelle Nélisse) and Victoria (Megan Charpentier), and how they survived ‘alone’ in the woods for 5 years. They disappeared after their father (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) killed their mother and kidnapped them attempting to also kill himself and his children. Their uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) with the help of his girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain) had been searching for his nieces since their disappearance. Lucas spent most of his money paying for people to search the woods. One day a searcher came across an abandoned cabin. He and one of his buddies enter looking for clues and they find Victoria and Lily.

I went into the theater expecting to be scared, frightened, and not being able to sleep that night. Instead, I jumped maybe 3 times and laughed more than that. Mama had some frightening moments, but also had funny and adorable family moments.  Andres Muschiett’s first mistake was introducing Mama too early in the movie, five minutes into the movie. The suspense just was not there for the audience. I must say the characters’ acting was spot on. Sometimes in films we see that children may need work in their acting, but not in Mama.  Towards the end I actually started to sympathize with Mama and what she went through in her past life. I believe Muschietti could have tweaked the ending. It left the audience with more questions than answers. However, Mama was a suspenseful, somewhat scary, entertaining movie and I’d recommend it to anyone.