If you go down to the woods today

Mama (15)
Running time 100 minutes
Rating:***

With its restrained violence, bleached out setting and intriguing sense of doom-laden suspense that flickers hesitantly between sadness, fury and cold revenge, Mama is an old-school horror film.
Unlike more recent workings of the genre, where blood and gore is splashed about in tidal waves, Mama, as befits its European gestation, deals more with horrors of the mind and soul, and is a success because of it.
It started out as a short film by Andres Muschettei, which caught the attention of cult Spanish filmmaker Guillermo del Toro (Pan’s Labyrinth) back in 2008. Del Toro eventually set up a Canadian-Spanish co-production with himself as producer and Muschettei as first-time director, and much of the filming taking place in Quebec.
The story concerns a financier, Jeffrey (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), who goes berserk, shoots his business partners and his ex-wife before fleeing with his young children into the backwoods.They find an abandoned cabin where Jeffrey prepares to end it all but is stopped by an angry presence that then looks after the children for the next five years.
When they are found by searchers financed by Jeffrey’s brother Lucas (also played by Coster-Waldau), they are brought back and stay with Lucas and girlfriend Annabel (Jessica Chastain – Zero Dark Thirty) while being helped over their ordeal by a psychiatrist.
But, the children have brought the presence with them – one jealous of anyone getting close to the children. The psychiatrist starts researching the background of a woman whose name emerges from hypnotism sessions with the older of the children and finds connections back to a death 120 years before.
Although a relatively low budget film (£15m) by Hollywood standards, Mama has the gloss and confidence of a much more expensive film. It uses special effects to enhance and expand the narrative rather than overwhelm it.
While it uses many of the standard camera tricks of the modern horror film (spider-like creatures creeping about, hands emerging suddenly from walls, figures rushing unnaturally fast towards victims) it does so with a Gothic air that fans of Tim Burton will recognise.
As with Burton’s films, the action is amplified with genuine emotions that help explain the story, and like Tel Toro’s films, there is dark symbolism everywhere, with nuns, crosses and butterflies.
It’s a little treat of a film that gives a lot to people prepared for the shocks and willing to relish an old-fashioned ghost story.