Universal Pictures
100 min., dir. by Andres Muschietti, with Jessica Chastain, Megan Charpentier, and Isabelle Nelisse

The young are impressionable. Just as a child who grew up in a racist household will start spouting derogatory terms before they can multiply, a child raised in an unorthodox environment wouldn’t flinch in the presence of certain figures that would chill others to the core. An exploration into the power of kindness toward children and the importance of a loving parental figure, Mama plays a tug-of-war battle between its desire to creep out its viewers and its attempt at making its point clear. Housing a few uneasy moments and some adorable lead children, Mama struggles to push either side of its dichotomy into the forefront.

It has been five years since young Victoria and Lilly disappeared along with their father after he cowardly shot his business partners and the girl’s mother. Their Uncle Lucas has spared no expense in those five years searching for his missing family members, hoping they are still alive. On the day his first payment to the men he has doing the legwork bounces, an unexpected discovery is made: Victoria and Lilly are found alive in an abandoned cabin in the middle of the woods. The feral girls are brought back to the world of the civilized and, after careful evaluation, it’s determined they are fit to live with their uncle and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). Annabel is there to support Lucas, but playing the mother is not the ideal life the independent rocker chick had in mind. When Lucas winds up in the hospital, the un-motherly Annabel is quickly forced to care for the girls on her own. When it seems that Victoria and Lilly are receiving visits from an unknown caller, the question of how these little children survived on their own for so long sprouts some new mysteries.

There are no surprises in terms of a story line here. Even if you couldn’t guess from the trailer, it’s laid out plainly and simply in the first few minutes of Mama: Victoria and Lilly were raised by a ghost. Most ghost-centric films are built on the premise that there’s a large mystery that needs to be uncovered, and you never really know the whole truth until the movie is about to end. Mama may contain a few mysteries to help uncover a proper ending, but its straightforward delivery makes for an easy pill to swallow. Offering as much information as it does from the start, Mama lets the audience enjoy the chills and jumps — this is an open invitation to be scared. Typical fright features will follow the same beats in their delivery, but at the same time the audience is wrapped up in trying to solve the mystery first so they can turn to their friend and look smart. Brushing the Scooby-Doo antics to the side creates a slightly more macabre setting.

On the other hand, Mama plays too lightly when it comes to its moral core. The tragedy of Victoria and Lilly moves the movie along, but in actuality the film’s main protagonist is Annabel. This is the story of a woman who grows up and accepts some responsibility due to these odd circumstances. One would gather that Annabel is such an aloof, antisocial personality because she herself was not loved enough by her parents, but that fact was not explored at all. Frankly, it’s practically an assumption on my part, but a fairly obvious one I think. Sticking with the same open and easy presentation in terms of the ghostly side of the picture, I appreciate that extra running time wasn’t stuffed into the story to expose factors a viewer can pick up on without a clichéd plot twist. Still, the movie is obviously trying to speak about the developmental growth of children and the power that love, or the lack-thereof it plays in their upbringing — to skimp out on fully exploring that thesis feels a little like a cop-out.

My biggest grip with the film comes in the form of Annabel herself. Besides the fact that I just don’t buy Jessica Chastain as the snarly, Joan Jett-ish rocker no matter how many flimsy tattoos you give her under the short black wig, her character doesn’t fit the environment. Lucas may be the free-spirited type with the freelance gig as an illustrator, but he and Annabel don’t fit as a couple. As the dark and handsome European-style loner, Lucas lives in a world of turtlenecks and overly serious tones. Show me the same man in real life, and the tomboy bass player in a band with spiky haired teenagers wearing all black is not standing next to him as a companion. Your character doesn’t have to be an emo kid to illustrate a personality that doesn’t want to have children. A scornful, take-no-shit businesswoman can deliver that same image and fit the story better than grumpy Annabel.

The dark corners and decaying settings all add to the unapologetic world the characters of Mama inhabit, but there still will be some people who are off put with its slightly controversial outcome. If it’s just the scares you want and you’re easily frightened, Mama won’t disappoint. Its ability to look past lengthy plot devices is both the strongest and weakest aspects it has to offer leaving a decent, yet uneven film as the final product.

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Matthew Schuchman is the founder and film critic of Movie Reviews From Gene Shalit’s Moustache and a contributor to Den of Geek.