Susan Granger’s movie review of “Ma” (Universal Pictures)
If this was just a story of a middle-aged psycho-killer who befriends a group of teenagers, invites them to party at her house and then terrorizes them, it would probably never have been ‘green-lit.’
But after director Tate Taylor decided to cast Octavia Spencer, an African-American Oscar-winner, whom he’d directed in “The Help” (2016), funding suddenly became available.
When teenage Maggie (Diana Silvers) moves with her single mom, Erica (Juliette Lewis), to the small Ohio town where her mom grew up, she eagerly seeks new friends but finds herself besieged by peer pressure.
“You don’t vape?” one asks, dismissively.
So Maggie goes off for an evening with Haley (McKaley Miller), Darrell (Dante Brown), and Chaz (Gianna Paolo) in a van that belongs to Andy (Corey Fogelman), hoping that strangers will buy them beer.
The only adult who seems remotely sympathetic is Sue Ann Ellington (Octavia Spencer), assistant to the local veterinarian (Allison Janney), but even she refuses them – until she realizes that Andy’s father is Ben (Lucas Evans), a security contractor.
After buying them booze, she informs Ben that his son is breaking the law. When the police appear, the kids immediately assume that Ben called them.
So when Sue Ann offers to buy them beer again, she insists that the kids come to her secluded, suburban house to party in the unfinished basement so they won’t get arrested. Obviously, they’re grateful and game, nicknaming her “Ma.”
“You think I’m Madea,” Sue Ann taunts them, referencing Tyler Perry’s matriarch.
The only hitch is that they’re not allowed upstairs because that’s where she’s hidden her wheelchair=-confined daughter, Genie (Tanyell Waivers).
Scripted by Scotty Landes, flashbacks illustrate Sue Ann’s excruciatingly miserable high school experiences, which left her traumatized and obviously deranged. She’s now determined to wreak revenge on those who humiliated her many years earlier.
Eventually, Sue Ann is told: “What happened to you was wrong, and we should have stopped it”…but that’s too little too late.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Ma” is a sadistic 4. Sheer malevolence.
