Rating :   67/100                                                                     100 Min       

Decent horror film with a few moments of palpable fear, exec produced by Guillermo del Toro (‘Pan’s Labyrinth’, ‘Hellboy’) after seeing director Andres Muschietti’s Spanish language short film of the same name. The eponymous mama appears in traditional tattered rags and multi-flex atrophied limbs, whereupon she decides to become the protector of two young girls, which is all well and good to begin with but eventually leads to relationship problems with other family members, and some much needed counselling. Many clichés, but also various successful attempts to avoid cliché – we end up with the buxom female (in this instance a convincingly gothed up Jessica Chastain) as the central adult focus, with ample cleavage as her most visible weapon, but as she avoids monstrous devourment (apparently, despite The Red Dragon using this for years, this is not a real word. It has to start somewhere though…) we are spared endless pointless chases, the ghost pretty much just gets on with it when it can be bothered, or rather when it is bothered. One of the hand drawn pictures in the girl’s bedroom is pretty scary, featuring some sort of creepy zombified Goofy. Hmm, yes try not to look at that actually (you can see it above).