Review: Ma

Ma, as its title may suggest, is not about a maternal figure. She may seem that way since she's played by Octavia Spencer, who is a natural at exuding a motherliness that is both warm and sassy, but she is a person in need of being taken care of. Yet she is the one taking care of things, and not in the best way, especially for the gaggle of teens that find themselves in her orbit.

Of the fairly homogenous and cliched group of teenagers, Maggie Thompson (Diana Silvers) is the one given the clearest semblance of a back story. She and her single mother Erica (Juliette Lewis) have returned to Erica's Ohio hometown to rebuild their lives after Erica's husband left her. Both mother and daughter struggle to adjust, though Maggie is quickly befriended by popular and slightly mean girl Haley (McKaley Miller) and her crew. The gang welcome another more unlikely new member in the form of Sue Ann (Spencer), who works in a vet's office where she's constantly sniped or shouted at by her boss (Allison Janney), and who gets in the teens' good graces when she agrees to buy alcohol for them.

Sue Ann obviously has ulterior motives behind her generous gestures - she continues to buy them alcohol and even lets them drink and hold parties in her basement - and they seem to do with Ben (Luke Evans), the father of one of the teens who also happens to be Sue Ann's former classmate. As Sue Ann ingratiates herself further into the teens' lives, flashbacks reveal a particularly humiliating incident that happened to Sue Ann as a high schooler.

Trauma is at the root of Ma and, much like the bullied title character in Carrie, trauma (em)powers Sue Ann to punish those who have wronged her. Certainly director Tate Taylor (The Help) and screenwriter Scotty Landes lay the groundwork in anchoring the inevitable horror in something deeply relatable: the need to be accepted by the people that one simultaneously admire, envy, and loathe. Yet there is an unrelenting flatness to the film that isn't even interrupted by the cheap scares littered throughout and the Saw-lite gore that awaits in the film's last third.

Spencer, at least, remains an ever riveting presence but, as fun as it is to see her relish embodying such an uncharacteristic role, it is also disheartening to watch someone of her calibre giving her best to such staunchly pedestrian material.

Ma

Directed by: Tate Taylor

Written by: Scotty Landes

Starring: Octavia Spencer, Luke Evans, Juliette Lewis, Missi Pyle, Diana Silvers, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis, Gianni Paolo, Dante Brown, Allison Janney