MAMA **

"Mama" is an old dark house, B-Movie horror flic given a bright new shiny coat of paint together with a smattering of "L'Enfant Sauvage" psychology amid the, admittedly goose-bump inducing, chills. It also features a couple of surprisingly good performances from Isabelle Nelisse and Morgan McGarry as the two little girls who share a somewhat unhealthy relationship with Mama, the rather malevolent spirit of the title. They are found in a cabin in the woods five years after their father took them there after killing their mother. He would have killed them too only Mama intervened and she's been looking after them ever since. Now they are living with their uncle and his kooky girlfriend, (a superb Jessica Chastain), but Mama has moved in as well and she's certainly not prepared to leave them in the care of a couple of interlopers.

This is a good, old-fashioned ghost story rather than a slasher movie or a tale of demonic possession with a genuinely frightening ghost and director Andy Muschietti certainly knows how to make us jump which marks "Mama" as quite a considerable cut above most run-of-the-mill genre pictures of this kind. If it isn't quite a classic it certainly enough to give you the occasional sleepless night.