Ma

Octavia Spencer does crazy creepy very well and very unnervingly, but unfortunately her performance was the only thing good about this not-even B-grade (C-grade?) horror camp-edy although I am sure it was marketed as more of a psychological thriller. It had laugh out loud moments but more due to the unintentional hilarity of bad script and bad acting, rather than genuine comedy. Its premise had so much potential but it was squandered away on a pedestrian, generic, utterly predictable plot. In spirit, it had similarities to 2016's Don't Breathe, but whereas that film subverted expectations, Ma's director Tate Taylor and writer Scotty Landes lacked the courage to even dip their toes in that pool.

As aforesaid, Spencer was great. She really owned the film and the screen, but as an executive producer, she should really have pushed for her character to go beyond. We have faith in her to do that and at least then the film might have been more interesting.

Diana Silvers led the cast of teenagers and she was mildly interesting, but was much better and interesting in Booksmart. 

As for the rest of the teenage cast, there were moment whereby it seemed that the film might subvert the generic roles as expected, i.e. the jock, the bitch, the cute/nice boy and the joker, but alas, Ma ain't no The Cabin in the Woods and Taylor/Landes did not have the balls to do that.

The adult cast, other than Spencer, were generally adequate. Yes, even Allison Janney. Juliette Lewis did her best but has yet to recapture the glory of her Cape Fear days; Luke Evans, getting ubiquitous these days but may need to be more selective in his roles, was uninteresting; at least Missi Pyle just camped it up unabashedly.

Like I said, this film had so much potential. A Josh Whedon/Drew Goddard version of this might have been great, but sadly we only have Spencer's creep-tastic performance to reminiscence on.