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Mama (Mama)

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She was portrayed by Javier Botet , who also portrayed The Crooked Man in The Conjuring 2 , Tristana Medeiros in the REC film series, the Leper, one of the many forms of IT , in the 2017 adaption of IT , KeyFace in Insidious: The Last Key , the Slender Man in the 2018 film adaptation of the same name, and Dracula in The Last Voyage of the Demeter .

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Biography [ ]

Edith after taking back her baby.

Edith Brennan was a former patient at St. Gertrude's Asylum in the 1800s. Her appearance and simple actions imply she had Down syndrome, though this is never officially stated. She breaks out of the asylum and stabs a nun who had taken Mama's baby (also named Lily) into her care then steals the baby back. Chased by the authorities, she ends up at the edge of a cliff overlooking a lake; seeing no other path, she jumps and hits a tree branch on the way down. While an unconscious Mama fell into the lake and drowned, the baby (killed by the impact) was stuck to the tree trunk and was recovered by the pursuers.

Mama becomes a ghost, twisted by the sad emotions of not knowing where her child is (she is unaware of why the baby was not in the lake with her). This causes her to take a form of physically being twisted, with body parts askew and many joints bending the wrong way. She searched the woods for centuries trying to find her baby, until she stumbled upon Victoria and Lily about to be killed in the cabin by their deranged father , to which she broke their father's neck and began taking care of the children as substitutes for her deceased baby.

Mama's presence is generally signaled by jet-black moths and electrical problems. She plays with the children but hides from sight of anyone else; Victoria always takes off her glasses when she looks at Mama and tells Dr. Dreyfuss she won't come where she can be seen, as Dr. Dreyfuss originally believed "Mama" to be an alter-ego of Victoria.

Early in the movie, Lucas is pushed down the stairs by Mama and ends up in a coma. This forces Annabel, who feels very uncomfortable with the children, to take care of them. Over time, Victoria becomes more like a normal child, but Lily retains her feral nature; this is attributed to the fact that Victoria was older and thus had socially developed before their abandonment in the woods.

Over time, Annabel becomes attached to the children, and later, Victoria begins to prefer her over Mama, but Lily still remains completely loyal to Mama. Annabel becomes aware there is something wrong and that Mama may indeed be real. Victoria worries for her safety, saying Mama gets very jealous. Dr. Dreyfuss begins to believe the stories of Mama, first because Victoria is able to tell stories with information she shouldn't be able to know, and later because he actually sees Mama. In the course of the investigation, he obtains custody of the corpse of Mama's baby. Dr. Dreyfuss comes to believe that Mama is located in the cabin in the woods and goes to investigate one night but is killed by Mama there. 

The girls' maternal great-aunt Jean Podolski visits one day, but believes Annabel is abusing the children (due to bruises Lily has from her animalistic tendencies) and begins to spy on the house for proof. Lucas has a dream induced by his dead brother while in a coma, asking him to save his children and pointing him to a location in the woods.

Annabel visits Dr. Dreyfuss's office after another supernatural night at the house but finds out he is missing; she steals his objects related to the case. At this point, she learns of the aspects of the case which the doctor had found out about and finds the baby's corpse, as well as Mama's past life. At the same time, Mama becomes furious and attacks the children and Annabel; Victoria tries hard to defend Annabel and pleads for Mama to stop, but Lily is still clearly loyal to Mama. Annabel is knocked out, but at the last moment Jean breaks into the house and has her body possessed by Mama. Mama uses this body to take the children to the cabin. Annabel wakes up, grabs the baby's corpse, and drives to the lake, finding Lucas along the way, who has left the hospital and gone to the site his brother told him about in his coma dream.

Mama crawling.

They arrive at the cabin, finding Jean dead on the floor but neither Lily nor Victoria. Annabel sees the cliff that Mama had originally jumped from; remembering the warning that ghosts are twisted souls doomed to repeat their mistakes, she realizes Mama's intentions to re-enact her fall and jump off the cliff with the children. Lucas and Annabel arrive in time to stop the children from jumping, but Mama attacks them. The assault is stopped when Annabel offers Mama a bundle, containing her baby's corpse, and Mama begins crying, preparing to jump off the cliff with it, her twisted appearance reverting to her beautiful human one.

However, as they are leaving, Lily shouts to Mama and she regains her twisted appearance and attacks again, knocking out Lucas. She grabs the kids and walks to the edge of the cliff. Annabel tries desperately to stop Mama, eventually beaten to the point that she can only hold onto Victoria. Once at the edge of the cliff, Victoria tries to convince Lily not to go, and Lilly cries that Lily, Victoria, and Mama should all be together. Mama jumps off the cliff with just Lily, and upon hitting the branch, Mama and Lily turn into a shower of butterflies. The movie ends with Victoria realizing that one of the butterflies watching over her is in fact Lily, perhaps referencing a ghostly regret of Victoria not going with her. Also, that butterfly, unlike Mama's (which are moths and are black) is blue.

Personality [ ]

Mama is seen as a loving parent and shows good knowledge in playing and taking care of Victoria and Lily. However, in times when Annabel interferes, Mama can turn angry, insatiable and extremely jealous, often trying to protect her adoptive children and violently lash out, pertaining to her malevolent side.

Mama, once a beautiful and thin woman with long hair, became a monstrous and skeletal figure with greyish skin, frail and disjointed limbs and long sharp fingers. She also has a pair of round, glowing blue eyes and dirty hair that flows in an ethereal and eerie manner. She wears a simple dark dress which became more tattered and equally floated like her hair.

As a ghost, Mama showed to be capable of a vast amount of wraith-like powers, most infamously her ability to fly. She is seen using possession once and can hide in the shadows, as well as being able to transform through shape and size.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

This is what the terrifying ghost from Mama looks like in real life

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Whether or not you’ve seen the horror flick Mama, you will no doubt have come across its freaky lead ghost character in memes and GIFs.

One of the most terrifying monstrosities we’ve ever seen on the big screen, you’d be forgiven for thinking that Mama was the result of some pretty warped special effects.

But what makes the spectacle so awe inspiring is that there’s actually an actor beneath it all – yep, meet Javier Botet, the man behind the fearsome Mama.

Botet suffers from Marfan syndrome, a condition that affects the connective tissues in the body and often results in longer than normal limbs and above average height.

He has also played a part in upcoming films The Revenant and Crimson Peak.

Here is a short video of some of the movement testing for Mama:

That’s probably more terrifying than the movie itself.

MORE : Brilliant pictures capture the absolute HORROR of being attacked by a flock of seagulls

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The creepy ghost creature Mama is real, according to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau

Game of Thrones' Nikolaj Coster-Waldau plays two characters in the horror movie Mama , but his biggest challenge was acting against an actual ghost. Because Mama was real , not just some CG tennis ball chasing around the actors. It was a real actor, wearing creepy make-up and giant latex fingers, who stalked the sets on all fours.

In our exclusive interview, Coster-Waldau describes what it was like working with a real life creature. Plus, get a good look at Mama with one very spoilery picture below!

What do you think is scarier, feral kids or ghosts?

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau: The combination is scary. But the ghost, the ghost for me. However, the kids in this movie really freak me out.

When you first see the kids after they've been stranded in the woods for several years, they look like little rat people. Was that CG?

I think it thinned them a bit, and maybe made the eyes a little darker. But the movement is all the kids. They may have sped it up a little, but the kids did all the motions. They had a movement coach work with them to get all their actions down. [When they start scratching at me] I told the girl playing Megan that you have to hit me for real. Or else it's too difficult to pretend. And she went for it!

In the movie you play two characters, Jeffrey, who is a very bad man and does some very bad things, and his twin brother Lucas, who later gets the girls. What's it like holding a [fake] gun to a kid's head?

That scene was... You know when I read the script, I liked that it had such a dark beginning. It's a different story in a way, it's almost like those stories you read in the paper — "father loses it and kills his family" — and then it becomes this different story. I wanted to show the craziness. But I also wanted to see if we could find the little point where [the audience] could look in and see a lost soul. Of course, it's disturbing when we did it. And the actress is such a sweet little kid, and then we pull out the gun — yeah, it's nice. The scene worked... That sequence was the most difficult emotionally to do, because it's a disgusting place to go. He wants to die, and clearly he has to take them with him because they won't be able to survive alone. It's disgusting. it's just horrible. I have kids myself.

There are a lot of references in this movie to the idea of "unfit parents." The first parents are unfit, and then later your other character Luke and his girlfriend Annabel (played by Jessica Chastain) are also called unfit parents by others. The creature was definitely an unfit parent. Why was this theme important?

I like the entity, the creature, the ghost, that they gave her a real, emotional motivation. It's not just something that comes out of nowhere and comes to hurt us. She wants something. I thought that was interesting. Together with the other mother, Annabel, who just doesn't want these kids at all, she wants them out of her life. That conflict is interesting.

It feels like the mothers in horror movies are always the compelling figures fighting to protect children, and the fathers are always a bit clueless, why?

I don't know, but it's like that saying about about bears. If you run into a bear cub in the wild you just have to pray you don't run into the mother. There's just something very deep and fundamental desire to protect your kids, no matter what. I think the bond between a mother and her child is incredibly strong.

What did the Mama character look like on set? Was a lot of her CG?

No, no, most of it wasn't CG. We had this amazing Spanish actor performer who was Mama. His name is Javier Botet. He has this insane body — he's like the skinniest guy I've ever seen, and very long-limbed. Then they had the special FX team from Pan's Labyrinth who did his head, so he had four or five hours everyday in make-up, so he came out every day looking more or less like Mama. But without the flowing hair, they added that after. But he was there to shoot. He had those crazy movements. It was weird the first time we saw him on set because he has a crazy look... He had these latex fingers and he would touch me like this [wraps fingers around his neck] — it was disgusting. And Jessica, she has these fights with him. It was all him.

Mama will hit theaters on the 18th of January.

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Movie Review

Where Dread Throbs and Little Girls Scuttle

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By Manohla Dargis

• Jan. 17, 2013

Guillermo del Toro, the reigning godfather of motion-picture horror, is the modern-day Val Lewton , the legendary producer of atmospheric chillers like “The Curse of the Cat People.” If you’re a movie fan, you know that horror doesn’t get much better than this, and when it comes to contemporary offerings it rarely gets more enjoyable than “Mama.” Instead of delivering buckets of guts and gore, this ghost story offers a strong sense of time and place, along with the kind of niceties that don’t often figure into horror flicks, notably pictorial beauty, an atmosphere throbbing with dread and actors so good that you don’t want anyone to take an ax to them.

The story opens with a camera sliding up to a car parked at an angle, with the driver’s door open and the radio blaring in front of a suburban house. Catastrophic economic news has led to a panic, with one executive, Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), running amok. Since the fetching Mr. Coster-Waldau plays the blond bad boy Jaime Lannister on HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” you may expect the worst. The director Andy Muschietti — who shares script credit with his sister, Barbara (who’s also one of the producers), and a third writer, Neil Cross — whittles the story down to its freaky primal nub. One minute, Jeffrey is holding a gun and contemplating the unthinkable with his two young daughters; the next, the girls are five years older and singing a lullaby straight out of “ Hellraiser .”

The Muschiettis open the movie with “once upon a time,” tipping that “Mama” is a modern fairy tale of sorts. After the girls went missing with their father, their uncle, Lucas (also Mr. Coster-Waldau), initiated a search. Two of his trackers find them in a derelict midcentury-modern home deep in the woods. (Dad remains M.I.A.) It’s a setting that suggests an abandoned Don Draper weekend getaway, save for the two critters scuttling across the floors and atop a fridge, where one hovers over the other like a bird with a chick. Filthy, with matted hair and skinny spider legs, these are the little lost girls, Victoria (Megan Charpentier), and her younger sister, Lilly (Isabelle Nélisse), wild children seemingly headed toward an unhappily ever after.

Lucas takes custody of Victoria and Lilly, to the sullen displeasure of his live-in girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain). Together they move into a house provided by the hospital where the girls are treated. However appealing its cast, the movie sputters in this stretch, partly because it takes time to recover from the shock of Ms. Chastain’s amusingly apt Goth drag (she only looks menacing), with her jet-black accouterments and multiple tattoos snaking around her pale arms. More problematic are the lapses in logic. The filmmakers easily sweep the girls out of their woodland digs, but they stumble with some of the more ordinary scenes.

“Mama” began as a wittily unnerving three-minute short about two girls and a maternal creature that the Muschiettis shot to show Mr. Muschietti’s range as a director. Mr. del Toro took notice of their pocket shocker, and while he took only an executive producing credit on the feature-length “Mama,” it fits with the more successful movies he’s signed onto. Mr. del Toro understands that nothing says terror like a home that’s become a rattling cage. And so, once Lucas has been awkwardly dispatched, leaving Annabel home alone with the girls, Mr. Muschietti gets down to shivery business.

Ms. Chastain and her excellent child co-stars, an intensely matched set, embody their characters with soulful believability, whether they’re working together or creeping along a hallway solo. Left to their own devices these three initially circle one another warily. Where this reluctant, plausibly uneasy family is headed is obvious, but Mr. Muschietti throws out enough diversions and visual wit to keep you distracted from the predictable turns. In “Mama” horror is intimate, domestic and overtly feminized, so much so that its monster — Javier Botet, from the “(Rec)” Franchise — opens up darkly oozing, Cronenbergian holes in the wall, a striking visual suggesting that the house itself has given birth to the demon. Here the law of the father meets the wounded wrath of the mother.

“Mama” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). A consistent sense of dread, topped with some dead.

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Very few horror movies would last past the second act if the characters in these films were actually fans of horror movies.

Some time after the first occurrence of Scary Old Timey Music Wafting Through the Vents, after Creepy Bugs Fluttering Inside the House and certainly by the time of the "Accidental" Fall That Sidelines a Key Character — well, that's when any red-blooded, movie-going individual would run out the front door and never look back.

To the credit of director Andy Muschietti , his co-writing team and a first-rate cast, "Mama" succeeds in scaring the wits out of us and leaving some lingering, deeply creepy images, despite indulging in many of the aforementioned cliches — and about a half-dozen more. (Executive produced by horror master Guillermo del Toro, "Mama" is a feature-length expansion of a three-minute short that Muschietti made with his sister Barbara.)

In addition to at least three or four jump-in-your-seat stingers, we get some of the most creatively chilling nightmare sequences in recent memory. A stylized dream (which is really a transferred memory) set in the 19th century, in which we see a crazed young woman creating bloody terror before leaping off a cliff with her newborn, all of it shown from the madwoman's point of view? That's a lot more innovative than anything we're likely to see in yet another film about a plodding behemoth in a mask chasing after dumb teenagers through the woods.

In the prologue to "Mama," we learn of a shooting at a financial firm after an economic crash. A distraught executive named Lucas ( Nikolaj Coster-Waldau from "Game of Thrones") arrives home, quickly collects his two young daughters, Victoria and Lilly, and speeds off. They wind up in an abandoned house deep in the forest, where Lucas apparently intends to shoot his daughters before he can kill himself.

That's not quite how it works out.

Flash forward to five years later. Lucas' brother Jeffrey (also played by Coster-Waldau) has never given up hope. His team of searchers finally stumbles on to the very abandoned house we saw a century ago in the nightmare. Dad's long gone, but the girls are still there — covered in mud, making strange noises, crawling on all fours in rapid fashion like wild animals. How could they have survived on their own?

The girls are kept in isolation for a few months as Dr. Dreyfuss ( Daniel Kash ) records their every move while ostensibly helping with their assimilation. Given that Victoria keeps making cryptic references to an unseen "Mama" and Lilly sleeps under the bed, gnaws on fruit, twigs and the occasional bug, and screams whenever anyone tries to touch her, the girls hardly seem ready for ice cream, pajamas and bedtime stories, but Jeffrey is determined to give them a normal life.

So Jeffrey and his rocker-chick lover, Annabel ( Jessica Chastain in a black wig and a tattoo sleeve), take the girls to their new rent-free home, provided by the ever-lurking Dr. Dreyfuss, who wants only to keep studying the little ones.

Let the chills and spills begin. As Dr. Dreyfuss investigates some long-ago murders at a facility just a few miles from the site of that house in the forest, Jeffrey is sidelined by an "accident," leaving the reluctant Annabel in charge of the girls, who are still a long way from being invited to anyone's play group. (Not that we ever see a hint of even one neighbor on the block. Does no one hear all the shaking, rattling and rolling going on in that house where the rocker chick lives with those scary little girls?)

For the longest time we don't see much of the ghostly Mama, who apparently has been alternately caring for and terrorizing the girls all these years and has made the trip with them to suburbia. She flashes by the screen, or we see just the top of her head as she zips about the house. Once we do see her, yipes. Thanks to a combination of CGI and a performance by the extremely thin, extremely tall Spanish actor Javier Botet, this is one frightful Mama.

The real mother in the story is Annabel, who slowly sheds her tough-talking, who-gives-a-bleep exterior as her nurturing instincts take over. It's worlds away from Chastain's Oscar-nominated turn in " Zero Dark Thirty " and further proof she's one of the finest actors of her generation.

Some elements of "Mama," including the dream sequences, are reminiscent of Japanese horror films. There's also some dark and wicked humor, as when Lilly plays and giggles with an offscreen Mama while Annabel goes about household chores, oblivious to the insanity occurring just around the corner. Coster-Waldau is solid in what turns out to be a supporting role, and Megan Charpentier and Isabelle Nelisse are terrific as the little girls.

Movies like "Mama" are thrill rides. We go to be scared and then laugh, scared and then laugh, scared and then shocked. Of course, there's almost always a little plot left over for a sequel.

It's a ride I'd take again.

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Mama (2013)

Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements

100 minutes

Jessica Chastain as Annabel

Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Lucas/Jeffrey

Megan Charpentier as Victoria

Isabelle Nelisse as Lilly

Daniel Kash as Dr. Dreyfuss

Directed by

• Andy Muschietti

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'Mama': A Good Old-Fashioned Horror Movie

David Edelstein

Victoria (Megan Charpentier) and her sister, Lilly (Isabelle Nelisse), are near-feral orphans in the horror thriller Mama . Universal Pictures hide caption

• Director: Andrés Muschietti
• Genre: Horror
• Running time: 100 minutes

Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some disturbing images and thematic elements

With: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Daniel Kash

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Credit: Universal Pictures

'I'm Not Your Mom'

I was weaned on horror movies and love them inordinately, but the genre has gone to the dogs — and to the muscle-bound werewolves, hormonal vampires, flesh-eating zombies, machete-wielding psychos, etc. It's also depressing how most modern horror pictures have unhappy nihilist endings in which everyone dies and the demons pop back up, unvanquished — partly because studios think happy endings are too soft, but mostly because they need their monsters for so-called franchises.

But Mama is an entertaining step in the right, which is to say backward, direction. No, it's not original — it doesn't drill for fresh nerves. And the subtext has problems I'll talk about later. But it's a good old-fashioned ghost story, shapely and poetic, beautifully fashioned. And scary — let's not forget scary.

The director is first-timer Andy Muschietti, and the producer is Mexico-born horror maven Guillermo del Toro, who moves back and forth between popcorn genre pictures and surreal fantasies with imperiled child characters, among them Pan's Labyrinth .

Mama hinges on imperiled children, too. Lilly and Victoria are little blond sisters who've spent five years alone in a cabin in the middle of the woods after being kidnapped by their estranged father, who'd just murdered their mother. He doesn't stick around — I won't say why. The girls are finally found by trackers hired by their uncle and, at first, they're barely recognizable as human. They hiss and claw and scamper around on all fours. The younger, Lilly, was barely a toddler when she entered that cabin. Whisked away from it, she keeps calling out, "Mama."

The girls' uncle, Lucas, is played by Danish actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who cut a fine, romantic presence as the villain in last year's terrific Norwegian thriller Headhunters . But it's Lucas' live-in girlfriend, Annabel, who's the protagonist. She's played by rising — risen, really — star Jessica Chastain, her hair cut sharp and dyed raven-black, her eyes rimmed with mascara. You can't take your eyes off her, which is a good thing, because you spend a lot of time following her down dark corridors.

Annabel is a Goth rocker who doesn't want kids — we know this because in her first scene she takes a pregnancy test and breathes a sigh of relief when it's negative. So it's quite the challenge to care for two feral girls at the behest of a hovering therapist who thinks the kids need a stable home. Annabel makes her discomfort plain when the girls are delivered to her and Lucas' new suburban house, supplied by a hospital for occasions like these — you know, the feral-kids-need-a-stable-home occasions.

As unwilling foster parent Annabel, Jessica Chastain is the flesh-and-blood figure at the core of a story about conflicting maternal instincts. Universal Pictures hide caption

As unwilling foster parent Annabel, Jessica Chastain is the flesh-and-blood figure at the core of a story about conflicting maternal instincts.

The movie will ultimately come down to whether Annabel can bond with these girls and, in the process, discover her own maternal instincts — the only effective weapon against the title character. I won't tell you who or what Mama is or where she came from or what she wants — but she's a ghost to conjure with cinema's eeriest, a spidery thing with a face that's a dry-rotted mask of pain and rage.

As in many modern horror films, a lot of Mama 's scares come with fortissimo musical exclamation marks. But others are the result of director Muschietti's witty staging, with sight gags that make you laugh and then gasp, like the shot in which little Lilly is playing tug of war with her off-screen sister, Victoria and — oh, wait. There's Victoria walking down the hall. So who ... ? Oh .

Fernando Velazquez's music is deliciously hammy, evoking nursery rhymes and funeral processions. And there are swirling, swooping, eye-popping expressionist dream sequences — visions, really, telepathically induced by a jealous and very volatile spirit.

The biggest problem is that the central question — whether selfish punk Annabel will find her inner mom and save the girls — is beyond old-fashioned: It's reactionary. But the heart-rending operatic climax sweeps you up in a more complicated question: whether either or both of these little girls will forsake a devoted but demonic psycho Mama for one who might be less constant but won't suck out anyone's innards.

I was guessing right till the end, which is not only satisfying — there's no potential sequel in sight.

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Some Serious Questions About the New Horror Movie 'Mama'

Oscar contender Jessica Chastain has a new ghost movie,  Mama , out this weekend, and we have so many questions.

Riding the subway back downtown after a screening of the new ghost movie Mama , my viewing partner and I posed few questions to each other about what we'd just seen. We continued asking these questions even once we were off the subway and comfortably ensconced in a window seat at a snug East Village bar. We had lots of questions, is the point. And so, in lieu of writing a full-on review of this senseless and tediously dumb movie, I'm just going to, as an homage to Pete Wells , pose some of those questions, put them out into the inter-ether and wait not-very-expectantly for a response. Beware: spoilers abound.

1. Why is the creepy abandoned cabin in the Virginia woods, where a ruined financier (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) who's just killed his business partners and wife takes his two daughters to kill them, decked out in dusty 1970s furniture? I mean, that's fine, cabins got abandoned in the '70s same as any decade, but then what specific connection does the 140-year-old ghost who saves the girls from their daddy have with this relatively contemporary (and, if you cleaned it up, quite lovely) abode? And why does the camera linger on the name of the house, written on a little plaque outside, if the name plays no part in the rest of the movie? Is this all just spooky set-up with no real meaning behind it?

2. Why does the financier's brother Lucas (also Coster-Waldau) — who spent five years looking for his two nieces before they are discovered, feral and wild, in the cabin — deserve to have custody of the girls over their mother's sister? I get that she's frosty and blonde and Lucas is a hip artist with a rocker grrl wife/girlfriend named Annabel (Jessica Chastain), but beyond that? Why is this barely working guy with a reluctant life partner such a better candidate than this woman of equal relation to the children who can offer them stability and seeming affluence? Are we simply to go along with the movie's early failings in logic and sense-making because we're told to?

3. Back to those feral children, you're telling me, Mama , that two little girls running around like animals in a pretty well-situated cabin in Virginia of all places weren't found for five years ? What, did the locals forget that cabin existed? Or did they just think, "Aw heck, those littl'uns probably aren't in that furnished cabin, that'd be crazy"?

4. Why do Annabel and Lucas so unquestioningly agree to live in the house that the creepy psychiatrist Dr. Dreyfuss (Daniel Kash) offers them? What even is this house? And if it's a science house, meant for observation of patients, where are the cameras? Also what? Do such things even exist? Surely this isn't just some lame excuse to get the characters out of their cramped apartment and into a spooky, dark, drafty home, right?

5. If one of the two girls, the younger one Lilly (the rather remarkable Isabelle Nélisse), is as feral as she appears to be, would she really be sent to live with relative strangers so quickly? And would the two girls really be left alone with their uncle's girlfriend after the uncle suffers a mysterious accident and is laid up in the hospital? If Dr. Dreyfuss has these kids in an observation house, where's the observation? He stops by like twice in the movie, shouldn't he be there more often?

6. And when exactly does Dr. Dreyfuss figure out that the girls have brought a ghostly presence with them? When did he have time to write all the stuff that, of course, Annabel eventually finds and reads? Is Dr. Dreyfuss evil? Simply curious about the supernatural? It can't be that he's simply a hollow device used for the dispensing of exposition, can it?

7. About this ghost: if she has as many powers as she displays in the film's turgid and nonsensical climax, why doesn't she just use her scary ghost abilities on the first night? Or when the girls were at the hospital after they were discovered? What use does a 140-year-old ghost hellbent on one thing have with toying with people? Why all the subtle scares? Why not just fly over there and grab the kids at the first possible moment? Does it seem odd to anyone else that a ghost would be concerned with the plot mechanics of a steadily mounting suspense story?

8. And hey, once we find out what the ghost's ultimate mission is, where's the explanation for why she didn't just do it five years ago, the day she found the two little ones in the cabin? What was the wait for? Do ghosts just change their minds like that, say "Oh hey, actually I want to do this with you now," after five years together? Is capriciousness a common ghostly trait, or does the movie just invent shit when it wants to because why the hell not?

9. What exactly are the rules of this movie? Is the ghost flying to and from the cabin and the science house? Or are those holes in the walls with moths crawling out of them some sort of portal system, like the space tunnels in Contact ? If so, why bother? Seems awfully elaborate for an extremely powerful supernatural being, doesn't it? And why do the two little girls seem to know that Mama will get jealous and go after Annabel and Lucas? Has Mama gone after people in the past? Does that mean that people did find them in the cabin, but Mama just killed them? If so, why didn't anyone notice that people kept going missing near that cabin? And why didn't Mama kill the two old guys who eventually found the girls and took them away? Was she out on an errand? Where is Mama when she's not around?

10. What happened to Annabel and Lucas's little dachshund? Why did he just disappear after one or two scenes?

11. Why does a ghost, possibly the ghost of Lucas's brother but possibly Mama, type "M A M A M A M A M A M A" on a hospital computer before Lucas has a prophetic dream? What's the point of that? Also, why do some current horror movie makers think computers are scary when computers are not scary? And why do some current horror movie makers think that cheap computer animated ghouls are scary when they just look like dumb videogames? Why does Mama move like a stickbug when she is the ghost of a person, not the ghost of a stickbug? If Mama can possess people's bodies, as she does at one point, why didn't she do that to Jessica Chastain way in the beginning of the movie? Why does Mama keep doing arbitrary, poorly designed things that are supposed to look scary? Are these people, including director Andrés Muschietti, simply winging it, making up stuff as they go along? Are people really supposed to pay $13 to see someone pile lame special effects on top of a sorta interesting initial premise and enjoy it?

12. Is this really the kind of thing that producer Guillermo del Toro wants to attach his name to?

13. Why does it seem so hard these days for people to make horror movies that actually are well thought-out and have some degree of narrative cohesion? Do people really go in for video game-level special effects arbitrarily thrown at the screen with lazy thoughtlessness? Doesn't it seem odd that the bar has been moved so low? Even in the wake of great ghost movies like The Others and The Ring ?

14. Finally, do we think this stinker will affect Jessica Chastain's Oscar chances?

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Mother Ghost

Keith Bennets mother passed away a year ago, and he feels like he has moved on with his life, until one morning his mothers jewelry shows up on Keiths bathroom sink. The same jewelry she was... Read all Keith Bennets mother passed away a year ago, and he feels like he has moved on with his life, until one morning his mothers jewelry shows up on Keiths bathroom sink. The same jewelry she was buried in. Keith tells his wife Karen, about the jewelry and that is the last straw. She ... Read all Keith Bennets mother passed away a year ago, and he feels like he has moved on with his life, until one morning his mothers jewelry shows up on Keiths bathroom sink. The same jewelry she was buried in. Keith tells his wife Karen, about the jewelry and that is the last straw. She claims he is distant and has shut her out. Now he thinks he is seeing things that aren't t... Read all

• Rich Thorne
• Mark Thompson
• Kevin Pollak
• Dana Delany
• 6 User reviews
• See more at IMDbPro

• Keith Bennett

• Karen Bennett

• Cemetary Anget

• Skateboarder Guy

• Ben Bennett

• Bar girl #1
• (as Amanda Dickson)
• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Trivia Mark Thompson's original storyline was an eleven-page script he wrote as part of his acting class. At the time, his mother was terminally ill, and he wrote all the things he might wish he had said after she passed away. Thompson showed it to director Rich Thorne, who suggested that he take it out to feature length. The film itself was shot on weekends in late 2001 and early 2002. During that time, Mark Thompson's sister died; his father passed away shortly after production wrapped. Also during that time, both of Rich Thorne's parents died in a period of less than two weeks.

User reviews 6

• SuccessLocksmith
• Dec 17, 2008
• August 8, 2002 (United States)
• United States
• Broad Reach Properties
• It's An Us Thing Productions Inc.
• It's a You and Me Thing Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro

Technical specs

• Runtime 1 hour 16 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Mother Ghost

2002, Comedy/Drama, 1h 16m

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Mother ghost   photos.

Mourning the death of his mother, a man (Mark Thompson) finds a piece of her jewelry that changes his life.

Genre: Comedy, Drama

Original Language: English

Director: Rich Thorne

Writer: Mark Thompson

Release Date (Streaming): Aug 7, 2015

Runtime: 1h 16m

Sound Mix: Dolby Digital

Cast & Crew

Mark Thompson

Keith Bennett

Kevin Pollak

Dana Delany

Karen Bennett

Cemetary Anget

Charles Durning

Garry Marshall

James Franco

Skateboarder guy

David Keith

Joe Mantegna

Rich Thorne

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25 Scary Ghost Pictures

Humans have a reluctant fascination for horror themes. There are many art forms that specialize in scary effect and horror. Many scary movies have been box office hits. This is a popular theme in tattoo art as well. Halloween has a special meaning and the scarier your ensemble the better is the effect. Horrifying and scary images are popular as wallpaper as well.

These are some scary ghost pictures that are just perfect for someone who likes such themes.

When your computer boots and the horrific picture lights up the screen it can give you a strange pleasure that is your own little secret.

Things that would normally scare the shit out of you can also have an essence of fun. Otherwise why are horror films so popular? Some have known to be runaway hits at the box office. Maybe it is our lack of knowledge of the afterlife that generates this interest in ghosts and horror. Or maybe it is just a morbid curiosity about the unknown. Whatever the reason may be, horrifying topics have become an art form especially during Halloween. These are a few pictures of scary ghosts that will make superb wallpaper. When your screen lights up, be prepared to be scared!

If you like this article, you might be interested in some of our other articles on Mila Kunis Pictures , Engagement Picture Ideas , Cute Couple Pictures and Hello Kitty Pictures .

Blood Sucking Ghost

For a really scary ghost picture this one with a bloody mouth and hollow eyeballs is just perfect.

Playtime Horror

The kids in this scary picture look prepared to enact the Antebellum Ghost Story.

Demonic Princess

A ghostly princess with her bloody body and green face looks horrific despite the tiara and lace.

Eyes Of Satan

The eyes of Satan peering out from under the hood make a genuinely scary ghost picture.

Effects Of Brutality

Laura Palmer as she appears after her brutal murder makes a very cool scary ghost picture.

Ghostly Apparition

A blurred ghostly vision like this one seems right out of a horror movie and makes a great scary ghost picture.

Black And White Ghost

The black and white effect of this scary ghost picture is fantastic as it highlights the horrific effect of a ghost.

A blood-red halo is what one would definitely expect a scary ghost to have like in this picture.

Distorted Skull

A distorted skull with bulbous white eyes and horrifying teeth is a terrible looking scary ghost picture.

Secretive Ghost

A secretive ghost dressed in all white makes a true scary ghost picture when she has such long hair covering her face.

As far as scary ghost pictures go, this ghost with a mummy-like face takes first prize.

Horrified Horrific

A ghost with a horrified expression as well as horrific look is a very unusual scary ghost picture.

Mama, Papa And Kids

An entire family of ghosts and skulls…what more do you need to see a scary ghost picture.

Ghostly Pallor

A girl with ghostly pallor like this and red satanic eyes is surely a superb example of scary ghost picture.

Enjoying Afterlife

This is an unusual scary ghost picture with the tortured ghost enjoying afterlife with a cigar and drink.

Trendy Zombie

This is a zombie of a very stylish woman going by her dress code and makes an unusual scary ghost picture.

Cannot Leave Her Loved Ones

This young girl‘s ghost cannot leave her loved ones and go away but will be a scary ghost picture for anyone who sees her.

Glassy Eyed

The glassy-eyed look of this beautiful ghost creates a lovely and scary ghost picture at the same time.

Halloween Ghost

This is meant to be a scary ghost picture but actually reminds one of Halloween fun and makeup time.

Horrifying Woman

A body-less woman with fiery eyes and torn lace surely makes one of the most scary ghost pictures one could think of.

She Is In The Corner, Isn‘t She?

This girl in this scary ghost picture knows that there is a ghost standing in the corner of the room.

Fleshless Jaw

This is a really scary ghost picture with the fleshless jaw and black rimmed eyes of the ghost.

Bled To Death

This scary ghost picture shows the ghost of a young girl who probably bled to death going by her mouth and clothes.

Evil Eyed Ghost

The evil in this ghost-man‘s eyes cannot be missed. As scary ghost pictures go this is a great one.

Love And Mayhem

Love, cheating and mayhem are depicted in this superb scary ghost picture.

Wow.. Most of the pictures here are really scary. I like how they are made. ^^

So scary ghost pictures i really got scared to see this pictures they are so real.

Ohh!!!! these ghosts pictures are so scary i can’t see anymore i m sensing fear.

OMG!! These ghost tattoos are so scary i just can’t open my eyes for seeing these picture.

Ohhh!!! These pics are really scary. I found ‘Horrified Horrific’ the most scariest one.

Some of the female ghost are cute, they are not scary. especially for ” ghostly pallor” girl

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