About the film (courtesy of Universal Pictures):
Everybody’s welcome at Ma’s. But good luck getting home safe. Oscar® winner Octavia Spencer stars as Sue Ann, a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town (Diana Silvers, Glass), to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own. She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home. But there are some house rules: One of the kids has to stay sober. Don’t curse. Never go upstairs. And call her “Ma.” But as Ma’s hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare, and Ma’s place goes from the best place in town to the worst place on earth.
There have been no shortage of newly released R-rated offerings this month in theaters, with a couple of them (John Wick: Chapter 3 – Parabellum, Long Shot) doing quit well in both the critics’ eyes and in their box office hauls. No longer is the restricted rating seen as the pariah in regards to box office success. At the end of the day, moviegoers are the ones being rewarded because the resurgence has led to a higher number of quality movies that contain adult-related themes. Ma is one of those movies that should reap the benefits because it chose a edgier pathway.
One of the things that becomes evident pretty quickly with this horror thriller is that Octavia Spencer is quite the flexible actor, and in her role as Sue Ann aka Ma, well you’ll be treated to a variety of personalities. Diana Silvers, Juliette Lewis, Corey Fogelmanis and Luke Evans are other actors lending a hand here. Don’t be fooled though, this is all about Spencer and her ability to channel quite the unsettling character. Much like James McAvoy achieved with Split (2017) and Glass (2019), audiences will be talking about Spencer’s unsettling work for a while.
Ma doesn’t carry on too terribly long and does a pretty decent job of keeping some aspects hidden from the various TV spots and trailers, so this means that audiences should be able to enjoy this story as it wildly unfolds. Director Tate Taylor makes good use of the R-rating that this film totally earns and it’s refreshing in a weirdly warped way to witness it. Due to certain subject matter, this will not be appealing to everyone, but it is definitely an interesting time out the theaters. While this may not be at the top of your list to see this weekend, I’d say that if gritty thrillers are remotely your thing, Ma has a lot of redeeming factors to it that will make for an interesting experience.
