Ma Review
R: Violent/disturbing material, language throughout, sexual content, and for teen drug and alcohol use
Universal Pictures, Blumhouse Productions
1 Hr and 39 Minutes
Director: Tate Taylor | Screenwriters: Scotty Landes
Cast: Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis, and Luke Evans
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 (Diana Silvers, Glass), 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. She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home. But there are some house rules: One of the kids has to stay sober. Don’t curse. Never go upstairs. And call her “Ma.”
I love Octavia Spencer. I believe without a doubt that she’s one of the best actresses working today. So, when I saw the trailer for Ma, I wasn’t just intrigued, but also excited. A woman terrorizing high school kids with a party space? That’s awesome.
There is no doubt that, in one way or another, you will have fun at Ma. Either you’re intentionally laughing with it or unintentionally laughing at it. The cast does a good job with their material as nobody gives a bad performance. Even the ensemble of kids, including Diana Silvers, is pretty good. If only this movie didn’t feature one of the worst and most confused scripts I’ve witnessed unfold on screen for 99 minutes.
As far as 2019 stalker thrillers go, I owe an apology to a movie. Greta, I’m sorry I talked shit about you. While you were really stupid, at least you delivered on your premise and were consistent with your story. Ma, on the other hand, has to be one of the most undercooked, convoluted cinematic messes from Blumhouse to date. How in the hell did one of the best trailers I’ve seen in years end up being one of the worst movies I’ve seen in 2019?
Director Tate Taylor has been known for delivering dramas and whatever The Girl on the Train was, so this is a step outside of his comfort zone. He does a good job directing his cast who deliver really solid performances, but even the other areas of the production fall tremendously short. I get that this is a Blumhouse production, a company notoriously known for creating cheap horror and thriller features, so you can’t expect much style. Their quality also varies. But everything about this is shot so generically and bland that it lacks every form of tension. With this being their latest release after Us, it’s completely dull from a filmmaking standpoint.
Then, you have the screenplay which is completely God awful from the jump. No matter how many digressions or benefits of doubt you need to immerse yourself in the story, screenwriter Scotty Landes does nearly everything in his power to throw a curveball of cringe, which occurs heavily throughout.
I love noticing the transparency of male writers who are so disconnected from the youth - and women, for that matter - and being so inept to character that it disrupts any form of enjoyment to be had. Granted, this film has so many laughable moments and Landes has a history of comedic projects, but all the laughs delivered are unintentional because of the serious tone it sets. The movie isn’t subtle or tongue-in-cheek. It’s just blatantly dumb and it gets more frustrating as it progresses.
The film starts with Maggie moving into the city her mother Erica grew up in and starting a new high school. Almost immediately she’s thrusted - well… pressured - into joining the popular kids because she’s new and pretty. There’s nothing distinct in personality about Maggie that makes this believable. The girl who forces her to hang with her group of friends literally says, “You don’t want to be uncool and not to hang with the popular kids,” or something along those lines. So, just like that, Maggie becomes “friends” with these people on her literal first day of school. It was one thing for that to be unbelievable given the film’s absurd premise, but all the characters are written so poorly stereotypical that they resemble high school kids that are made fun of in SNL sketches. All of the kids - Maggie included - lack any form of a personality and their dialogue is crushingly bad. The only personality all of them have is young, dumb, and dumber. So, when Ma terrorizes the kids and you’re supposed to fear for them, despite how stupid they are, you never get the chance to. You don’t even remotely feel any sort of concern or attachment to any of them because of how poorly written they are.
Now, I love Octavia Spencer and she rules this movie with her energy, sinister stares, and ruthless psychotic actions, but the way her character is depicted and the story they set for her is way too convoluted that it makes the character less intimidating and shows way too much about her backstory that any sort of mystery is stripped away. In the midst of all this madness and chaos in the story that doesn’t ever seem to work, we are given flashbacks to Sue Ann’s youth and what motivated her to go down her “dark path” for revenge. Once it makes its point, it’s one of the most ill-conceived and lazy executions I’ve ever seen for a character’s revenge story in a long time.
Then, as the film progresses and it teases the reveal of this dark “secret,” you turn back to Sue Ann and think how stupid her “plan” (or whatever) was all along, for she wouldn’t have even opened up her space if that secret she was trying to keep was that important to her. Given the number of Black people in this movie, you can easily figure out what that secret is.
This movie doesn’t know who to aim for because it fails any sort of appeal for every demographic. It can’t be for high schoolers or college students because they can call bullshit on every plot point and the abundant amount of terrible lines of dialogue that make no sense. It can’t be for thrill seekers because it is devoid of any sort of thrill that it might as well be brain dead, and when it does pop off, it’s already far too late into the movie and then it goes straight back to stupidity.
The good news is that Diana Silvers is in Booksmart and her talents are better equipped there. Though she doesn’t have much screen time, she does a great job showcasing her talents there. Because of the thin character written for her in Ma, her ability to shine is limited. Maggie is the only person who has common sense, but common sense is not a personality trait. They never establish any form of an arc for Maggie and by the time it’s “realized” it makes no sense and comes out of left field that all you’re left with is, “Yeah, because that is what this was all about, all along.”
There is a good range of better movies and TV shows currently out right now to satisfy your needs. If you want a good thriller, see Brightburn which just came out last week. If you want to see a movie about high schoolers who party that also stars Diana Silvers, see Booksmart. If you want to see (and I don’t care that I’m spoiling this because when it’s introduced, it never meshes with the general story AT ALL) something relating to a mom with a daughter that has Munchhausen syndrome by proxy, watch The Act. Seriously, the biggest secret in the movie is stripped straight out of the Dee Dee Blanchard murder and it doesn’t fit with the premise it sets. The movie attempts to be so many things and attaches one too many story elements which never work because of the script. Not only are you able to notice the glaring flaws, but you also see the lack of identity in this thriller, making it forgettable.
This is frustrating because that trailer sets you with expectations that it never delivers. At all. There are many areas where this could’ve been a great thriller, but fuck, man. It just never even makes it close. All of the thrill elements fail so bad that you end up often laughing at the movie and not with it. I can enjoy dumb things as long as I have no expectations at all, but because of how crazy the trailer made this movie to be and how it doesn’t deliver on that makes it just angeringly bad.
What did make this one of the unforgivably worst movies I’ve seen this year comes from the women, written by a man. It’s one thing when you can’t write high schoolers for shit, but when you can’t write women, especially at a time where they’re running circles around you with complex characters, then you need to be ashamed.
Every female character in this movie is either evil, drunk, or stupid. It just yells the fact that this was written by a man. Granted, the male characters are poorly written too, but this movie is rampant with women and they’re all cringeworthy. It’s just like how poorly Maika Monroe’s character was written in Greta but in multitudes.
If it wasn’t for the fact that Booksmart didn’t just come out and is the perfect portrayal of kids in their youths having personality, I wouldn’t have bat my eyes. But the fact that nearly every female character is driven by lust for a man as a means for their horrid actions, especially the titular character, is really angering and kind of borderline offensive. I already went through a shit ton of poor final dispatches with the final season of Game of Thrones and this did so much of the same thing. I’m surprised the film didn’t end with, “Written by D.B Weiss and David Benioff.
If you don’t believe me, take it up with the mistress of horror, Myan.
If there’s one thing I hate when it comes to a thriller/horror film, it’s false advertising. The previews for Ma will have you (as it did me) believing that this movie will be genuinely unnerving. It isn’t. It’s hilarious in all the wrong ways and I still can’t figure out how much of it was intentional.
The script is emotionally tone deaf and makes one too many stupid, questionable jokes. The music supervisor was completely out of touch with the time frame and the audience it was trying to play out for. ‘80s music at a modern teen party? Please spare me the bullshit. You know someone would’ve snatched that aux cord real quick and played Drake/Ariana Grande/*insert other pop star names here*.
As talented as Octavia Spencer is, her spooky glares were never enough to save the film’s tone (or lack thereof). By the time we get in a few gory moments that benefit from the R- rating, it’s too little too late. If you’re gonna give the Saw/Hostel vibe a shot, you have to go big or go home. And someone should’ve sent Tate Taylor and Scotty Landes home.
Sidenote: Stop letting clueless men write teens and female characters. I’ll repeat this until the day I croak.
Inept to the definition of thrills due to a convoluted script riddled with unbelievably inconsistent flaws and dialogue, Ma isn’t just “meh,” it’s aMAzingly bad.
Rating: 1.5/5 | 31%
