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In Tate Taylor’s “Ma,” a horror film torn between campiness and compassion, the thrills come extra cheap and late, all while an Oscar-winning actress struggles to maintain her composure in the face of danger. Because Octavia Spencer infuses a wicked smile into her maternal persona and treats the mammy archetype as a predator, the story’s initial ambition is likely to keep you glued to your seat throughout the film. However, as exciting as this all sounds, the film ultimately proves to be less interesting than its edgy premise and subsequent themes suggest.
During the first hour of the film’s 90-minute running time, “Ma” is dreadfully boring, which raises the first red flag. Normal for a horror film to have something at the start that serves as a bookend to the overall terror, but Taylor and Scotty Landes’ script keeps things simple by centering on high schooler Maggie (Diana Silvers of “BookSmart”) and her mother Erica (Juliette Lewis), who are relocating to the Ohio town where her mother grew up. There is an immediate sense that this is the wrong narrative focus, as the film provides a generic depiction of how a decent new kid could be corrupted by schoolmates who wield their popularity as if they are the one-percent, or how returning home can be embarrassingly painful, as when Erica runs into her classmate Ben (Luke Evans) and his friend Mercedes (Missi Pyle).
Sue Ann, played by Octavia Spencer, appears out of nowhere in the lives of Maggie and her new friends as a passerby outside a liquor store who agrees to buy them a bottle of wine. A wolf in vet clinic scrubs and a Dorothy Hamill haircut, she quickly earns their respect by sharing her own fondness for drinking in the same rock quarry they’re about to visit. One of the unforgivable caveats of “Ma” is enacted shortly thereafter: the children are not allowed to conclude that when a cop arrives later to break up their party, it was perhaps Sue Ann who had reported them to Ma. There are several instances in “Ma” where the writing for the teen characters is laziness, and that lack of honesty rots the screenplay: you don’t believe that a swarm of teens would find it acceptable to congregate in a random woman’s basement, and you don’t believe that enraged adults would not simply stop the movie’s villain by publishing “Local Woman Charged with Hosting Underage Alcohol Party” newspaper headlines.
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One of Taylor’s simplest methods of demonstrating that danger is approaching is to simply expand the narrative to include Ma’s point of view, which primarily concerns her quiet life as a veterinarian (during which she is frequently yelled at by her crotchety boss, played by Allison Janney). Ma spends her time stalking Facebook and then staring into space. This series of inserts is supposed to make us feel uneasy, especially because they take us back to when she was in high school, when she was completely unaware of the traumatizing bullying she was subjected to by her classmates. However, these prove to be over-cooked moments, which would be enough to derail the career of any performer who does not possess Spencer’s fortitude. Taylor just can’t seem to find the right balance between evoking pity and making everything unsettling at the same time.
Ma Quiz
In no time, the teenagers have transformed Sue Ann into their personal servant and a novelty: they have renamed her “Ma,” and they throw wild parties in her basement while she serves shots. There is an emotional and tragic note struck: these scenes provide Sue Ann with the opportunity to experience the kind of popularity she did not have in high school, and she discovers a sense of purpose and excitement in being needed. It’s also mildly amusing to see her tease her new young friends or get down to “Funky Town” with them. After a while, Ma begins to test the limits of acceptable behavior, such as when she appears on campus and invites students to come over and party on a school day. She’s too much for these kids, but she’s also determined to get what she wants.
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This section of Spencer’s novel contains splashes of recognizable emotions, such as loneliness and neediness, as well as someone who appears to be more disturbed than their giddy Snapchats would suggest. However, as Sue Ann gets to know the children, she begins to piece together their relationship to the people who traumatized her during high school. After that, it’s as simple as flipping a switch. Sue Ann simply decides to start wreaking havoc, allowing the script to progress from being barely a slow burn to having weak jump scares, and finally to its final form of diet torture porn. Even the secret that Sue Ann keeps in her house, which is meant to make her more complicated than simply monstrous, comes across as too much of a plot device to be effective.
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The doomed teenagers of “Ma” form an amorphous blob, which grows with each rager that Ma throws in her newly remodeled basement, as the film progresses. There is only one standout character, Silvers, who has a dull storyline about growing apart from her mother and begins an innocent relationship with a boy named Andy, who is a standout character (Corey Fogelmanis). Silvers, on the other hand, is better at luring us into the horror of the story, acting as a frightened surrogate who, along with McKaley Miller’s Haley, breaks Sue Ann’s strict rule of never, ever going upstairs at one point.
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Sue Ann’s torture methods are Taylor’s most distinctive stylistic choice in this film, which comes after a string of obvious musical cues and stale party scenes. As a horror villain, Taylor and Landes follow the unwritten rules of the genre, which is a good thing. I’ll let you imagine the clever terror that a middle-aged veterinarian can concoct, but some of it had my screening audience wriggling in unison as they watched her. Sue Ann’s actions, however, are delivered in such a heartless sequence of events that they come across as less of a cumulative grand finale and more of a reward for simply remaining attentive.
It’s difficult not to be disappointed in “Ma” for having been such a missed opportunity. When you watch a movie, you desperately want it to take its cultural context and run with it, like how “Brightburn” last week imagined a pseudo 12-year-old Clark Kent as a super serial killer. Despite having that same inherently disorienting quality, the set-up for “Ma” completely ignores the many discernible themes that rise to the surface, such as popularity as a source of power, tokenism, and the lingering horror of our high school years. “Ma” can’t even muster up a tasty slice of nastiness because her knife isn’t sharp enough for that.
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