An audacious entry into camp, Ma gives Octavia Spencer a chance to go completely over-the-top and off-the-rails to deliciously fun effect.
There comes a point during Ma — actually, there are several points — where the audience questions how did this get made? How did Tate Taylor, the director of the garishly melodramatic adaptation of Girl on a Train and the candy-coated feature The Help transition to a throwback to 1960s hagsploitation with a touch of ’80s horror?
A certain subset of the audience will ask this question with a delicious smile on their face while others will ask it in derision, and that’s the appeal of Ma. For the right audience, Ma is an utterly bonkers horror stroke in the vein of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, dominated by an unhinged Octavia Spencer.
Ma doesn’t necessarily want to be Spencer’s film, though she is the captain of this madcap ship and any scene without her is pointless. Instead it’s meant to be Diana Silver’s as Maggie, a new student moving with her bartending mom (Juliette Lewis) to a small town in Louisiana. Maggie soon amasses a group of friends whose idea of fun is going on an old-fashioned beer bust, enticing adults to buy them alcohol. They catch the eye of Sue Ann (Spencer) who decides to help them out. A simple alcohol purchase soon turns into “Ma” offering the teens free reign of her basement for uncensored parties. But Ma’s intentions aren’t completely what they seem, and Maggie soon learns that Sue Ann might have a desire for revenge.
The dumb teens in Ma may have cell phones, but outside of that technology, Scotty Landes’ script wants you believing this is an earlier time. How else would you accept that none of these kids think to just order their booze on Amazon or have it delivered via Postmates? Watching them stand outside the local liquor store in broad daylight feels more Dazed and Confused than Booksmart.
But that’s the mental incongruity that comes from enjoying Ma; some things just won’t make sense and you need to roll with it. In a small town with seemingly 30 people in it, the cops never bring up the string of murders and disappearances. And there’s certainly never any resolution to whether a certain animal character makes it out of the movie or not. Just enjoy the crazy.
And there’s certainly plenty of crazy to be had! Spencer’s Sue Ann is ripped from the likes of not just Annie Wilkes (Kathy Bates) in Misery. The character’s roots go older, to Shelley Winters in 1971’s Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? or What’s the Matter with Helen. Those films thrived on getting an older actress to just run wild with a plot filled with gauzy flashbacks and resentment, all of which is presented in Ma. Spencer goes for broke with every emotion, starting off the benevolent older woman/mother figure who wants the kids to get home safe, “that’s all I care about.”
She eventually transitions towards wanting to party with the kids, blowing up their phones and demanding they “don’t let me drink alone.” There’s little ambiguity retained for the character to make you question whether this is extreme loneliness; inserted flashbacks to a time that’s presumably the ’80s emphasizes Sue Ann’s actions are intentional, though how that is with the way she’s introduced to the teens isn’t defined.
The rest of the cast are meat sacks for Ma’s needles or other pointy objects. Silvers, who was in Booksmart, is sweet but there’s little definition to her character other than being new and nice. Really the teens all fall into those thinly defined archetypes: the vaguely bitchy girl, the pretty nice boy, the pretty pretty boy, the person of color. The script is aware that no one will really care about them, so why waste time? Lewis, Luke Evans, Missi Pyle, and Allison Janney also make appearances but are there to give more grist to Sue Ann’s character.
When Spencer is finally given the chance to go full crazy, it makes Ma a completely joyous experience. Taylor plays up the film’s R-rating with a slew of inventively squeamish moments, particularly during the film’s third act, and it helps that his leading lady is able to match that. And kudos for boldly presenting male full-frontal nudity. In a landscape where women’s bodies are expected to be shown off, Taylor breaks the barrier with a scene that’s ironically shocking and frank because of how rare it is on-screen.
Ma is a wickedly delightful throwback to an era of feature that’s now become camp. If you’re open to an experience that’s unrelentingly looney and makes little logical sense you’ll have a great time!
Ma is out in theaters May 31, 2019.