Mamá

Open your eyes kids! No innocent mother would open up her crusty arms and tilt her body in an unspeakable shape, rapidly looming in for a hug. None! Muschietti manages to build enough tension within the short two minute runtime, so much so that a feature film was produced years later. Slow camera movement through dark claustrophobic corridors, crafting an adequate amount of suspense. The minimal use of lighting also enhanced the atmosphere, further illustrating the bleakness of the house. However aside from his technical prowess, it simply is just a horror sequence. A clip if you will. Not exactly a complete short, and unfortunately not a memorable one. Sure, "Mamá" herself is eerie and needs to eat a hamburger or five. But with no substance, it is just a disposable short that really doesn't give enough scares. Think of it as teaser. "Oh, that would make a good film!" is what Muschietti was aiming for. To which he succeeded. Alas, a few more minutes to further set the mood and create some memorable scares were required, and could've set a high bar. Mamá creeps on in, and yet quickly creeps out of your mind. Thank God the film was better...

I first saw Mamá on YouTube back in 2013 and I can remember having trouble sleeping afterwards. This is atmospheric, scary and in your face. The images you see here will stay in your head no matter what. There's no going back after watching this. Three minutes is the perfect length for this little horror gem.

This is far greater than the feature that followed.

I have revisited it many times and when you know the outcome, the tension is palpable.

Highly recommended.

Tip: watch it late at night and alone under a blanket with the lights turned off.

What started off as a short, became a feature length movie. And Guillermo Del Toro was the one who saw the potential in the movie. In both movies so to speak. The general idea is simple and yet very horrifying. Having two children in peril will work most of the time. Shooting this like it is one take (great effects doing that and the other things in the movie) was genius too.

Of course there are more takes, it's very complicated, but also very short and you get the feeling of dread and fear. Saying more about it, would spoil the "fun" you could have watching it. The good thing is, it doesn't matter if you watch this before watching the feature length movie or afterwards. The movie itself is kind of absorbed as one scene in the movie ... though it has a small difference ...

Little Victoria (Berta Ros) is waken up by her sister Lili (Victoria Harris) who insists on leaving the house because somebody unpleasant has come back.

Although I watched this through the tainted point of view of seeing the feature film first, I think I can judge and review it objectively. (At least I hope so.) In this very short film, we have two little girls scared by an unknown entity. We do get to see this "Mama" a bit, and she is indeed something to fear. I actually think the effects look far better here than they do in the full-length version.

This excels as a short film because it leaves us wondering: who are these girls, what is this Mama, and where are the parents? And despite leaving us with questions, it is very self-contained. The lack of plot is actually more effective than having a plot.

Mama (2008)

*** (out of 4)

Andres Muschietti's three-minute short is what helped get his 2013 film made. Fans of that film (whick I'm one of) will certainly want to watch this just to compare how the sequence here looked in the feature. What we basically have is two little girls walking around their house when they notice mama and try to get away from her. This scene was actually redone in the feature to a very good effect and considering this thing just lasts three-minutes there's really no reason to try and treat it the same as a feature. With that said, I was actually quite impressed with this short as the director at least managed to build up some tension and the pay-off was nice. I will also admit that I actually liked mama from this short better than the feature, which was good but often times relied on too much CGI. Both Victoria Harris and Berta Ros are good as the children.