Universal Pictures
Octavia Spencer has enjoyed a lengthy career of appearing in Oscar nominated films such as The Help, The Shape of Water, and Hidden Figures. She also has had smaller roles in such films as Halloween II and Bad Santa 2. What I love about Octavia Spencer is her ability to adapt to any role she is given. She handles dramatic scenes well and in comedy roles, she is charming and funny. Spencer has mostly stuck to one or two genre of films, but with her newest film Ma she is breaking into the horror genre.
Spencer stars as a lonely middle-aged woman who befriends a group of high school students looking for a safe place to drink. Ma opens up her basement so that high schoolers can come and go as they please to drink and smoke. What a lovely lady Ma is! As the group becomes closer with Ma, they discover some horrifying moments about her past and she starts to become more obsessed with the teenagers and the fun place starts to become more of a nightmare.
Tate Taylor directed this film. He also directed Spencer in The Help. Taylor and Spencer’s work in The Help is vastly different than here in this horror film. Spencer was terrific in The Help. She was so good that she won an Academy Award for her performance. She isn’t going to win any awards for her performance in Ma, but I thought her performance was highly entertaining. I could tell that Spencer had a lot of fun in her role. She enjoyed the upbeat party moments with the teenagers as much as when she was terrorizing them. Spencer knew exactly what kind of performance this role called for and she was easily the best thing about this movie.
Octavia Spencer may be the best thing about the movie, but the dialog is easily the worst thing about the film, even from Ma. There were so many moments in the movie that I laughed and I am not sure if it was the writer’s intentions to make me laugh. Both the teenagers and Ma delivered some of the corniest lines from any movie this year. One moment that stood out to me was when all the teenagers were at Ma’s drinking and she walks up to one of the boys, rubs his arm and says, ‘Milk did this body good.’ What? Why? What was the point of saying that? It came with no context and was odd. Maybe it is because Ma is lonely and doesn’t know how to interact with people. Whatever the reason, it was bizarre.
Some other odd choices in the film was the music used for the party sequences. Whenever Ma and the teenagers were partying together, the film decided to choose music from the 80s which teenagers in 2019 probably wouldn’t want to get drunk to. They also came in the oddest of places throughout the film.
Some co-stars of Spencer’s included Allison Janney and Luke Evans, both great actors, who I was surprised to see in this kind of movie. Janney’s only purpose in the film was to yell at Ma when they were at work together. It was quite hilarious.
For an R-rated film, there wasn’t a lot of violence. The film traded its violence for a creepy performance from Spencer. Whenever there was a violent scene, it was decent. It wasn’t overly gory, but it also wasn’t satisfying either.
There is a certain part in the film where it kind of just feels pointless to continue it. Once the teenagers find out that Ma is psycho, they try to avoid her at all costs. Ma attempts to throw party after party to get them to hang out with her and it becomes boring and repetitive at that point. I think the film exhausted its big reveal to the teenagers too early and it would have been more impactful for them if the writers waited a little more to have Ma turn on them.
Ma was a wild ride. Although I couldn’t tell if this movie wanted to be a serious horror flick or a movie that wanted to be funny, I still found entertainment in it. It may not be the best movie of the year, but it is one I certainly will remember for years to come.
Ma has a run time of 1 hour 39 minutes and is rated R for violent/disturbing material, language throughout, sexual content, and for teen drug and alcohol use.
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