Mark Reviews Movies: MA (2019)

Become a fan on Facebook Follow on Twitter

Review by Mark Dujsik | May 31, 2019

So much happens between the lines of Ma that it's a genuine shame screenwriter Scotty Landes feels the need to pigeonhole a great character, a surprisingly tragic back story, and a fascinating study of dangerous loneliness into a thriller. To be sure, there is absolutely no reason to care a single lick about the teenage protagonists of this story who become the targets of an obsessed villain. They're self-involved and selfish and devoid of the ability to even recognize someone in pain. They get away with all of this, though, because the woman they take advantage of and ignore is insane and eventually violent.

Just from the instinct to sympathize with the antagonist over the young heroes, something, perhaps, went awry in the process of making this movie. Something did at least in terms of trying to present a straightforward thriller featuring a villain whose capacity for wrongdoing becomes clearer as the story progresses.

In regards to those intentions, the error was in casting Octavia Spencer as the antagonist, a lonely woman who still lives in the small town where she grew up. She's looking to avenge something terrible in her past by exacting punishment on the perpetrators and their children. It's pretty obvious in terms of motive and, as the screenplay begins to reveal that the character is insane, method. She manipulates her intended targets. She later abducts them, tortures them, attacks them, and kills one of them.

Here's the rub, though: Spencer is one of our best, currently working actors. She clearly has no interest in playing a character as predictable and routine as the one that's required for this material to operate as a thriller. This is bad news for the movie that Landes and director Tate Taylor seem intent on making. Unintentionally, it's good news for everyone else—well, except maybe for all of the other actors here, from whom Spencer steals the entire movie.

As Sue Ann, Spencer has transformed a generic villain into a fully formed character, who understands that she's essentially destined to be alone but refuses to accept that fate. In high school, Sue Ann was seen as a loser, although she loved a guy who seemed to at least like her and had a passion for caring for animals. Now, divorced and apparently living alone in a house in the middle of the woods and working as a meager assistant to the town's veterinarian, she is likely one or two misfortunes away from simply declaring herself to have lost at life.

Spencer brings a genuine sense of sadness and fear and anger to this role. In doing so, Sue Ann becomes much more than a mere villain, and whenever she's on screen, the whole tone of this story shifts—from the basic mechanics of a thriller into a study of solitude, desperation, and secret trauma. We spend the entire movie wondering why it's so adamant to pass her over for a bunch of vapid teenagers, who can only see Sue Ann as some pathetic woman who's happy to buy them booze and offer them a place to drink it in comfort and safety.

That's how Maggie (Diana Silvers), a newcomer to town, meets Sue Ann. She and her new friends at school convince Sue Ann to buy them alcohol. After a second transaction, she gets the kids to come to her house, where she offers them the use of her basement to drink. As long as Andy (Corey Fogelmanis), the group's designated driver who has a reciprocal crush on Maggie, is fine to drive and they don't bother her upstairs, she'll let them keep returning.

Maggie starts to think Sue Ann is a little strange when she parties with the kids and the number of teenagers in the basement starts to increase. Also, she pulls a gun on one them as a "joke" and somehow obtains all of their phone numbers. In reality, Sue Ann, whom all the kids call "Ma," is stalking them online and keeping a particular eye on Maggie, Andy, Maggie's mom Erica (Juliette Lewis), and Andy's dad Ben (Luke Evans).

There is really nothing new here. The bulk of the plot is dedicated to Maggie's realization of Sue Ann's behavior and her failed attempts to convince her friends that they should stay away from good old Ma. It's practically impossible to determine if the movie works as a thriller, because we're never on board with the protagonists. They're blank slates to be drawn toward Sue Ann and, during the story's climax, to be chained up in the basement while the woman showcases just how far she has fallen.

Far more involving is the story about which the kids don't give a damn: what happened between Sue Ann, a couple of their parents, and other classmates of that previous generation. Through a series of flashbacks, we see that unfold and, well, come to an understanding of Sue Ann that certainly doesn't fit the easy mold of a psychotic villain.

In between the lines of Ma, then, is the story of a woman clearly wronged, of perpetrators who got away with it, and of another generation that never even learns what transpired. It's right there, waiting to be explored and connected to what's happening, yet the filmmakers are as careless about it as these characters are about Sue Ann.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products

Buy the Soundtrack (Digital Download)

Buy the DVD

Buy the Blu-ray