Umma

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.

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

A reasonable jump scare horror movie, they held back on the horror when they should have gone all out so that's a shame, what it could have been!

Sandra Oh held our attention as did the daughter, the acting was good overall but it was all quite derivative and predictable.

This is a weak 6 outta 10 from me, meaning it whiled an evening away and was what it was!

There is little intriguing about the worn out premise, of the script, but there are still a few things to enjoy in this psychological melodrama. Sandra Oh gives a sturdy performance as the phobic isolationist on her California farm, and Dylan McDermott is a reliable co star. The traditional hanboks are beautiful.

But then there are the plot holes. What clingy Korean mother goes back to her country when he daughter is in the United States? How did a woman get married and have a child while never being around eléctricity? How did she go to school, afford a farm and learn to produce honey without electricity? Wouldn't Child Protective Services show up for a kid that has never ridden in a car?

Suspend all logic and you might enjoy the rest of the movie.

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.