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Created Feb 09, 2013 09:44PM PST • Edited Feb 16, 2013 04:16PM PST

1. Quality

2. Summary

   Good 3.0

   Ghost stories should all be as good as Mama, as should Jessica Chastain performances. While the teens in Mama’s PG-13 demographic may not care about Chastain, we adults dragged along for the ride do. Fortunately everyone will value seeing a first-rate ghost story – spooky, startling, affecting.

   One girl at our showing demonstrated her appreciation by bursting into tears. Remember, affecting.

   More significantly, Mama makes the most of our current age of uncertainty. The story starts with children orphaned by parents unsettled by the financial collapse and continues as an allegory of children looking for protection in a world where adults are often not up to the responsibility of being adults.

   Plus it’s a darn good ghost story.

4. Acting

   Very Good 3.5

   Jessica Chastain’s grounded, non-ethereal performance is a pronounced switch from what we’re used to seeing from her. Starting with her short, dark hair, she cuts a tomboy figure, way less feminine even than her CIA analyst in Zero Dark Thirty. Her voice and mannerisms are also tougher. Nothing vulnerable about this woman, even as she faces up to a ghost with a bad attitude.

   Call me crazy, but I like this Chastain more than her widely hailed performances in the Bin Laden movie or in The Tree of Life.

   Nikolaj Coster-Waldau stands up well to her, as a Peter Pan forced to become a guardian to his orphaned nieces.

   Isabelle Nélisse and especially Megan Charpentier are quite good as those pre-Kindergarten sisters. Charpentier already has quite a horror resume on IMDb.

5. Male Stars Very Good 3.5

6. Female Stars Great 4.0

7. Female Costars OK 2.5

8. Male Costars Good 3.0

10. Film

    Good 3.0

    Guillermo del Toro – Executive Producer is one hell of a credit. The genius of surreal imagination can’t claim that this film ranks up with his brilliant creations. But a film doesn’t have to be Pan’s Labyrinth or Hellboy 2 to be damn entertaining, especially when it is a fairly straightforward ghost story, well told.

    The Muschietti siblings – Andreas directs from a script he cowrote with his sister Barbara – deserve more opportunities to scare us based on this rookie effort.

11. Direction Good 3.0

12. Play Good 3.0

13. Music Very Good 3.5

14. Visuals Very Good 3.5
15. Content

16. Edge

    Risqué 1.9

    Little children in serious jeopardy is Mama’s métier. Of course, that’s been the case in fairy tales since time immemorial, it’s just more vivid here.

17. Sex Innocent 1.3

18. Violence Brutal 2.6

19. Rudeness Salty 1.8

21. Reality

    Supernatural 3.7

22. Circumstantial Surreal 3.0

23. Biological Fantasy 4.1

24. Physical Fantasy 4.1