Canary Duty - Ma

Hmm, it seems "kindly woman played by a noted character actress turns out to be psychotic" movies are like buses; you wait for ages, no sign of any, and then two come along at once.  Seriously, there's often a little cluster of these sorts of films all at once (Misery, The Hand that Rocks the Cradle, Single White Female), and then a while without them.  We recently had Greta, directed by Neil Jordan and with Isabelle Huppert in the title role, and now we have Ma, a Blumhouse project re-uniting Tate Taylor and Octavia Spencer, the director and star of The Help.  So, how does this one rate in this grand tradition?

Not very highly unfortunately.  Now credit where credit is due; Octavia Spencer is pretty good in the lead role, and when she lets loose, she makes for a great avenging force of an antagonist.  With these films, the appeal for a lot of actors is for getting the chance to do something so different, where it's perfectly fine for them to chew the scenery, as that's expected of them.  Spencer does great with the material and the role, but there's the problem; the character of Ma/SueAnn isn't actually that well written.  The story gives her a sympathetic backstory and such, sure, but she never comes together as a character that well.  It feels like there may have been a few rewrites, as some bits make it look like she's got a long term masterplan of revenge going on, against very specific targets, others make it look like she's only just gone down this route and is taking it out on a few characters just because.  In fact, you end up wondering, given it's a small town everyone is still a part of, why she didn't do any of this before.  With our main character being the daughter of someone returning to town, that might have been a good reason why then... except she's not the main target, it's someone who never left.  There's also a whole other subplot of psychotic behaviour involving a side character, which does sort of fit her backstory, but feels really superfluous to the flow of the plot.

Oh yes, speaking of flow, the story is really poorly paced.  Now I'm all for an organic build up of tension in my thrillers, I like it when we get to know the characters, we set up the seeds for matters to be scared of, all that sort of thing.  Thing is, that's not really what happens.  We get some more building up of Sue Ann and her secrets, but mostly the film is just sort of bumbling along towards the climax, not much is happening, and not a lot that's revealed is a huge surprise, bar that superfluous plotpoint I mentioned before.  It's just teens mostly not understanding the potential danger she represents for ages, and when things go fully into horror mode, it's so sudden and jarringly done it's with an audible "clunk".  Also, there are moments of set-up that don't work nearly as well as they should; you'd think that one side-character's habit which gets set up early on is going to be far more significant for what it ends up being used as (I'm not even sure if that character survived the film!).  There's even an actual Chekov's gun, who's use in story is also somewhat inelegant (not least because I swear it off-screen teleports to where it gets used!).

As for everyone else in the film who's not Octavia Spencer... you know all the cliches about teens in horror movies?  Yeah, this does absolutely nothing to subvert or defy that point, the teens are all just awful in this.  Now part of the story is about the horrors and shallow nature of high school, and it does get that across well.  However it does just mean that a lot of the time with these characters is just a real slog to get through.  Our main protagonist Maggie, played by Diana Silvers, is a better person, but a very bland character, Silvers has nothing to work with.  Now her mother, played by Juliette Lewis, has a lot more character to her, an existing backstory with Sue Ann, and dealing with coming back to the town; why couldn't she have been the main protagonist instead?  Seriously, the story from her point of view could have been really interesting, especially if you play it as "does Sue Ann have a sinister agenda, or is she being overprotective of her daughter".  In fact, as I write this, I do begin to wonder if that might have been the plan at first, but it was rewritten... hmm, I'll put my tinfoil hat on for that conspiracy theory!

In the end, Ma is just edging close to OK, without quite reaching there.  I think the main problem is that the script has elements that give it far more of an exploitation feel, but the direction refuses to go too far down that path, leading to elements of schizophrenia.  I will say something though; this has done reasonably well at the box office, £40m box office so far on a £5m budget, and I suspect one big factor is the novelty of having one of these psycho thrillers with an African American lead, that doesn't happen often.  On that point, the film doesn't really bring up the matter of race directly as often as one might expect, apart from one moment towards the end, bought up by Sue Ann herself in quite a disturbing manner.  There is a definite edge in there, an undercurrent and suggestion of racism, but it doesn't get directly said out loud, so it is refreshing that the main character to bring it up to be the one for whom it would be the most obvious.  Whilst I don't think the film as a whole works, it's good that such projects are being made, and finding an audience, giving actors these sorts of roles to showcase what they can be capable of given the chance.  I'd say skip this one in the cinema, but check it out on streaming, just for the parts where Octavia Spencer gets centre stage properly.  Trust me, you're really not missing a lot watching it that way...