Give director Tate Taylor credit—he doesn’t like pigeonholing himself into a single genre or style, and is brave enough to dive into new and exciting artistic territories with a genuine can-do attitude. He could have pulled a Lasse Hallstrom and followed up his smash hit The Help with a series of similar Oscar-bait fare and enjoyed a one-note but at least consistent and safe career. Instead, he decided to follow that up with the deliciously unconventional music biopic Get On Up (a box-office failure) and then the prestige-laced bus stop paperback thriller The Girl on the Train, an occasionally pulpy but ultimately deflated and dull affair.
Now comes Ma, one of those meagerly budgeted Blumhouse horrors. It begins as a clingy-new-BFF-turns-psycho thriller à la Single White Female, spins itself into a paranoia-dipped after school special about the long-term damages of high school bullying, and sort of sticks the landing with an appropriately grotesque and gory climax that drives straight into ’70s Wes Craven exploitation town. The resulting product is a bit of an uneven mess for a considerable chunk of the runtime. Yet Taylor’s willingness to at least have some fun with such a genre mishmash, and star Octavia Spencer’s chilling turn as an unconventional and layered villain—worth the price of admission for some—turns Ma into serviceable mid-tier Blumhouse fare. The film may come nowhere near the heights of Get Out, but it’s infinitely better than Truth or Dare.
Maggie (Diana Silvers) is a low-key teenager who moves back into her go-nowhere Mississippi town after her mother (Juliette Lewis) gets a divorce. She quickly makes friends with her high school classmates and goes out with them to do typical teenager stuff: Get your hands on some booze, find a secluded spot to get wasted, end of list. What’s refreshing about Scotty Landes’ script is that these are portrayed as regular dumb high school kids. They’re not hip or cool, with a distinct quirk applied to each. They don’t spew off random pop culture trivia like mouthpieces of a screenwriter in their mid-30s. Their dialogue and behavior are as plain and predictable as it gets, and that’s what makes them relatable.
Like most teenagers, Maggie and her friends have trouble with the first step of their plan, securing alcohol. In comes veterinary assistant Sue Ann (Spencer), a chipper cool auntie-type who buys the kids booze seemingly out of the goodness of her heart. After their regular hangout is busted, the gang begins to party at Sue Ann’s basement, gradually bringing half the school with them. Sue Ann becomes the town’s teenagers’ favorite middle-aged person, earning the nickname “Ma.” Yet Ma’s eerie personality traits begin to bubble up to the surface. Is she a tragic figure underneath the happy-go-lucky façade? What happened to her in high school, as the occasional flashbacks progressively reveal? Why is she so needy? Why doesn’t she want the kids to leave the basement to see the rest of the house? What are the bizarre noises coming from upstairs? Anyone who’s seen even one of these types of thrillers knows it’s not a rogue Roomba.