Ma (4½ Stars)

This is a psychological horror film made in 2019. It's almost exactly two years since I watched it in the cinema. I saw it in UFA-Palast, a cinema which unfortunately went bankrupt during the first Coronavirus lockdown.

The film takes place in Sandusky, Ohio. When Sue Ann Ellington was a teenager she was bullied at school. Maybe it was because of her skin colour. In the flashback to her school years all the other children were white. Maybe it was because she was shy. Children who want to be bullies always find an excuse to pick on someone weaker than themselves. This has been festering in her all these years. She now has a teenage daughter of her own, but she hasn't forgotten the children who were bad to her at school. They all still live in the same town. Sandusky is one of the small American towns where people never leave.

Erica Thomson (Juliette Lewis) is an exception. She married and moved to California. After her divorce she's moved back to Sandusky with her 16-year-old daughter Maggie. She was one of the bullies, so Sue Ann decides it's time for her revenge.

Maggie (in the middle) soon makes friends at school. Sue Ann wins their trust by allowing them to have parties and get drunk in her basement. At first Sue Ann wants to feel accepted by the children, in a way she was never accepted in her own youth. After a while the children start to feel freaked out by her constant attention, so her plans change. She wants to hurt the children in order to make their parents suffer.

 

Never trust a woman who likes to play games with teenage boys. Although I have to admit, I wish I'd known a woman like this when I was younger.

This is a chilling horror film that takes a long time to warm up, but in the last 30 minutes it's terrifying. It's a very untypical role for Octavia Spencer, and she plays it perfectly. She should make more horror films.

Success Rate:  + 10.2

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