WHAT’S IT ABOUT
A lonely middle-aged woman befriends some teenagers and decides to let them party in the basement of her home. But there are some house rules: One of the kids has to stay sober, don’t curse, and never go upstairs. They must also refer to her as Ma. But as Ma’s hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare, and Ma’s place goes from the best place in town to the worst place on Earth.
MOVIESinMO REVIEW
Another movie from the great Blumhouse production company. Like any company in existence, they have had their fair share of hits and misses. Using Blumhouse’s movie model to produce films on a small budget, makes practically every one of their movies a hit, monetarily. As for script and plausible content, that’s a different story, and this is where their latest venture MA, falls. With a budget of just 5-million, MA has earned over 25-million total gross as of 6/6/19. That puts it in the “HIT” pile for Blumhouse, but for the moviegoer, MA lacks in so many areas. The main cast is one of the problems. I’m not going to mention their names because they really don’t matter. Character development was weak. Therefore, I had no reservation over who lived or died. The acting was so painfully substandard, I was unable to fully engulfed myself within the story. On the flip side, if you look at soap operas, you might not consider their acting to be that bad. It’s a horrible trend that has been going on for a while now, finding people that look good regardless of how well they can act. The savior of MA is Academy Award winner Octavia Spencer. She is the one the movie centers around or at least it should have. There lies a main issue with the film. They spend too much time poorly trying to introduce people that don’t matter in the overall big picture. In the movie when Octavia’s character, Sue Ann “Ma” Ellington, agrees to buy a group of kids liquor, you get an immediate sense of “FINALLY, NOW THE MOVIE CAN START.” Watching Sue Ann interact with the high schoolers was awkward, weird, and creepy all at the same time. As the film progresses, they show flashbacks of Sue Ann in high school. A young girl with little to no social skills yearning for friends and the affections of Ben, her crush.
Octavia Spencer is an awesome actress, and she plays her part well, but the director/producers decided to bounce between the kid’s nobody cared about, and the parents of the kid’s nobody cared about instead of focusing on the only real star of the movie. Sure, we found out the tragic past of Sue and her seemingly lonely present. She was horribly bullied and a friendless outcast. This is why Sue is how she is, and honestly, with the present-day climate involving bullying in school, these scenes need to resonate with those in similar situations no matter what side of the process you’re on. As for Sue, at times, you understandably want to empathize with her but then again, because she never received the psychological help she so desperately needed, you’re left feeling conflicted. This is where the movie is at its best, but instead of maintaining the horror or continuing to thrill and keep us in suspense, everything stops. I can deal with a movie ending the “action” once or twice, but MA routinely stops right after every scene that could have taken MA from “whatever” to “Oh Crap.” In the end, you can’t help but feel a bit cheated out of what could have been.
OUR RATING – NOT THE MA I WANT TO REMEMBER 4.5
MEDIA
- Genre – Thriller
- Street date
- Digital – August 20th 2019
- DVD/Blu-Ray – September 3rd 2019
- Video – 1080p
- Screen size – 2:39:1
- Sound – English DTS-HD MA 5.1
- Subtitles – English SDH
Extras
- Alternate Ending (HD 2:01)
- Deleted Scenes (HD 11:23)
- Creating Sue Ann (HD 2:50)
- Party At Ma‘s (HD 3:53)
- Trailer (HD 2:34)