Del Toro does it again in scary sister thriller Mama

MOVIE

Mama (M)

Shannon Harvey

Duck under the covers horror lovers, because this is one movie mother you won’t want to tuck you in at night.

A nightmarish Spanish-Canadian ghost story, it’s inspired by a two-minute short film (on YouTube) horror-meister Guillermo Del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) saw and decided to produce as a feature film. He retained director Andres Muschietti and brought writer Neil Cross (Luther) and star Jessica Chastain on board.

The result is one modest but highly effective freak show that delivers just the right mix of nerve-jangling creeps and jolting moments to put you in the foetal position and crying for your mama.

Considered dead for five years, two sisters — Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse) — are found alive in a cabin in the snowy wilderness, albeit in a freakishly feral state. Under the watchful eye of a nosy doctor (Daniel Kash), the savage sisters are taken in by their caring uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Game of Thrones) and his rock-star girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain).

But the girls are far from ready for Barbie dolls and milkshakes. In fact, uncle Lucas suffers an “accidental” fall that puts him in a coma in hospital — the film’s only cliche — and leaves Annabel to look after the girls and figure out why they still talk to their unseen “Mama”.

Muschietti works minor wonders in planting the seed of a backstory in the film’s tense opening sequence, where the girls’ suicidal father (also played by Coster-Waldau) orphans them in that lonely cabin for five years. Then, as Chastain’s unlikely mother-figure is left alone with the ghastly girls, their over-protective Mama starts making her ghoulish presence felt.

Muschietti also pulls a clever one-two punch. At first, he creeps you out with the spooky little girls who dart about on all fours, screech, eat bugs and refuse to be touched. You sense a whiff of another “creepy kid” horror film. Then Muschietti pulls the rug out from under you as the girls themselves seem to be terrified of their omnipresent evil Mama.

Yet perhaps the best trick of all comes via Chastain herself.

We’ve seen a lot of her lately in Zero Dark Thirty, Lawless and The Help. Yet her black bob of hair, tattoos and punk-rock look had me fooled until the very end, when the penny dropped and gave me one last shock.

Like her chameleon performance, Mama creeps up behind you and yells “BOO” It’s the best rip-roaring horror movie since Cabin in the Woods last year. Mama is out now.