Umma

I love Sandra Oh, and I love Korean horror films. I thought that this was going to be a match made in heaven, but honestly calling it a horror movie is almost offensive.

Umma is predictable, boring more times than not, and all around just a lame attempt at something that could be amazing.

Umma can be an interesting study of motherhood and generational trauma with a dash of a touch of folk horror. After a promising start, alas Iris K. Shim is unable to maintain the tension or the emotional aspect it's direly in need throughout the rest of the film. In the end, it presented a rather dull, if not bland, third act.

What happened? The first half of the movie was so solid, interesting story, good acting, beautiful cinematography, great chemistry between the two leads, then the second the daughter came out of the basement and questioned her mother, the dialogue became very clunky and unnatural.

We were then confronted with some very unscary CGI and all the promise the film once held just fizzled away.

There was definitely a much better film in here somewhere. Such a shame.

I didn't like it. It did have atmosphere and the camera work was decent. But this film is a jump scare film and not a well-crafted elevated horror story. I don't like horror films that are a lot of jump scares stringed together without that good backstory. The tension doesn't crescendo like I would have loved. It's just a lot of look-behind-you-and-boo!

The mask, the uncle, and the suitcase are pretty dumb and serves no purpose. Kinda hard to take serious a ghost that travels overseas in an old suitcase. The film could have been better if the director spent screen time drawing out the past between Amanda and her mother, they could have gently ratchetted the sinister tension between both characters. In fact, my favorite scene is when Amanda and her mother's ghost have a 5-minute scene talking to each other about how the mother felt abandoned and the mother's resentment.

But two hours of hide and seek boo! Scenes and a teenager that just wants to fit in and be normal just didn't do it for me.

I hadn't even heard about the 2022 horror drama mystery "Umma" prior to sitting down to watch it. But I have to say that I found the movie's cover/poster to be interesting, and the synopsis was adequate. But of course with it being a horror movie that I hadn't already seen, of course I had to watch it.

Writer and director Iris K. Shim managed to put together an adequate enough storyline and script for "Umma". It wasn't a particularly outstanding or overly memorable movie experience though. Sure, it was watchable, and it was a nice mixture of Korean and Western cultures.

For a horror movie then I found "Umma" to be somewhat stale and slow paced. It wasn't particularly scary, and for a life-long horror fan, then "Umma" was essentially just a stroll in the park. "Umma" is focusing more of the drama aspects of the story than it does the horror.

Visually then you are not in for anything grand or impressive. But then again, "Umma" is not a movie that is particularly reliant on special effects and CGI. It had a little bit of special effects, of course, and it looked adequate enough. But you're not in for a spectacular show of special effects here.

Now, I am not really a fan of Sandra Oh, but she performed well enough in the movie. I wasn't familiar with actress Fivel Stewart, but she put on a great performance in the movie alongside the likes of Sandra Oh and Dermot Mulroney.

Sure, "Umma" was watchable and enjoyable enough for a single viewing. But that was essentially also it. This is not a movie that I will be returning to watch a second time, nor is it a movie that is at the top of movies that I would recommend you sit down to watch if you enjoy horror movies.

My rating of "Umma" lands on a somewhat generic five out of ten stars.