Ma (2019)
Directed by Tate Taylor
Sue Ann is a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town, to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.
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But the good thing is that the movie knows it; just as director Tate Taylor knows it; and star Octavia Spencer knows it too, with the Oscar-winning actress giving a swing-for-the-fences performance that trods some of the same territory as Kathy Bates in Misery and other madcap portrayals of that ilk.
Spencer, too, is quite good in a role that seems as inspired by the kind of work Kathy Bates did in Misery as by a white person’s perception of a “sassy” black woman.
“Ma” reminds me just a bit of vastly superior films like “Carrie” and “Misery.”
Of course, if you saw “Greta” — or if you’ve seen “Misery,” “Single White Female” or any other psycho-thriller about a woman with a crazy possessive streak — there is little in this terminally silly schlock exercise that will surprise you.
…that Sue Ann whips out and threatens to cut off while he’s bound to a bed ala Misery .
There are times when Spencer’s character feels less subversive and more like a gonzo Annie Wilkes from Misery; it’s clear that the filmmakers understand how to write Sue Ann in opposition to tropes, less clear that they know how to turn that into something meaningful.
“Ma” reminds me just a bit of vastly superior films like “Carrie” and “Misery.”
What unravels is a film with elements of Carrie and Misery mixed with a John Hughes nightmare.
“Ma” is indebted to horror films of the ’70s and ’80s, most notably “Carrie,” with its warnings about the revenge of outcasts.
Instead, writer Scotty Landes drags the film over several days and devises a backstory that references shades of “Carrie” (1976), “Misery” (1990) and “The Sixth Sense” (1999) with a pinch of dread, but no real terror.
The trauma that Sue Ann absorbed won’t be inherited; her terror concludes in a blaze reminiscent of the final scene of “Carrie,” with a gratuitous magical-Negro flourish.
Four decades ago, Brian De Palma's Carrie asked us to follow a similarly wounded and humiliated young woman -- albeit one with deadly telekinetic powers -- but, by placing us directly in Carrie's horrific life, with an abusive mother and the constant jeering of her peers, it addressed the idea of audience sympathy in intriguing ways (by the end, during Carrie's eventual psychic tirade, everybody -- bad, good, or indifferent -- suffer equally).
To be clear: In terms of ambition and execution, “Ma” is very far from “Get Out,” though the two pictures do share a producer, Blumhouse Productions, with a thrifty, profitable sideline in politically charged horror.
Like Allison Williams’s character in “Get Out,” Sue Ann uses her visibility as invisibility; she camouflages her power by seemingly conforming to peoples’ idea of her, this lone and unremarkable assistant.
The bullying she faced both in school and at work is framed as the consequences of being “unpopular" when racism and misogynoir were right there for the same producers of Get Out to mine.
At a time when both coming-of-age and horror movies are on the up, it’s logical that Blumhouse, the company behind the Oscar-nominated Get Out and the teen-slasher franchise Happy Death Day , would come up with something like Ma —a mutant that is at once a high school dramedy and a back-to-basics scary movie.
Blumhouse Productions – home of low-budget horror ( Paranormal Activity ), more ambitious genre fare ( Get Out ) and the occasional critically acclaimed drama ( BlacKkKlansman ) – have a rare misfire on their hands with this disappointing psychological chiller, directed by The Help 's Tate Taylor.
In 2017, Blumhouse Productions changed the contemporary horror industry with the release and success of Jordan Peele’s Get Out.
Taylor and screenwriter Scotty Landes are clearly aiming for an edgy John Hughes vibe in the film's many party scenes (the Hughes-penned Pretty in Pink is even referenced in the dialogue), but with the exception of Maggie, the teens are too one-dimensional for us to care about.
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"Ma" is a curious match of director and material with Tate Taylor, known for glossy, rather anonymous mid-budget Oscar bait such as "The Help", "Get On Up" and "The Girl on the Train", getting down and dirty with Blumhouse, the hit-making genre house behind "The Purge" and "Get Out".
Curiously, this film is backed by Blumhouse, the studio behind the recent strand of blatantly socially conscious horrors such as The Purge (2013), Get Out (2017) and Us (2019).
Luego, esto parecía, desde los trailers, un intento más de lectura social estadounidense a través del terror; algo que no es completamente ajeno a Blumhouse, a pesar de su tendencia al horror barato, y que vimos con cintas como Get Out , Cam , Whiplash y The Purge .
It comes from Blumhouse Productions, the scrappy company that profits with misfit, low-budget franchises like “Paranormal Activity,” “Insidious,” “The Purge” and “Happy Death Day,” in addition to the great “Get Out.”
Rather, he’s essentially making a Sean S. Cunningham movie for modern audiences, a The New Kids for an audience in need of that kind of entertainment (especially since it’ll take years for the college scam business to stop weighing all of Lori Loughlin’s old back catalogue down like a stone made of pure irony).
It made me think of Carol Clover’s comment in Men, Women and Chain Saws that Jonathan Demme’s 1988 prestige rape-revenge thriller The Accused “ends where many women’s fear beings, at the moment the jury delivers the guilty verdict” and that “its implication that the story is over when the men are sentenced is pure Pollyanaism.”
They linger because Carrie and Psycho and countless other pieces of great genre trash strategically train our gaze on the most sensationalistic aspects of human nature.
Of course, Maggie and a friend inevitably ascend the stairs, where they discover a dark secret about Ma in a suspenseful scene inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho.
The pieces are easily assembled – this isn’t an obtuse or complicated jigsaw puzzle – but it adds a little Carrie to what might otherwise be a purely Psycho-inspired entry.
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Instead, writer Scotty Landes drags the film over several days and devises a backstory that references shades of “Carrie” (1976), “Misery” (1990) and “The Sixth Sense” (1999) with a pinch of dread, but no real terror.
The character’s roots go older, to Shelley Winters in 1971’s Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? or What’s the Matter with Helen.