8 Horror Films Ruined By Showing Too Much
6. Mama
Mama’s narrative starts with two young girls that are found in the forest and brought back to civilisation by their uncle and his partner, who’ve been looking for them ever since their disappearance five years ago.
Unfortunately, it seems they’ve made another friend in the meantime - and a particularly attached maternal spirit will do all she can to take her ‘adopted’ children back.
The premise is a solid one, that builds in tension with each suggestion that not everything is right with the little girls. Mama is a genuinely terrifying experience with a great opening - but then spirals into disarray as soon as we see the vengeful ghost floating about in full view.
Envisioned with a wonky body in even wonkier CGI, Mama loses all its careful creepiness by letting her linger on screen for far too long. The whole ‘let’s turn into moths’ ending that sees the ghost get angsty with everyone on the edge of a cliff really just hammers the nail in the coffin for this one.