Mamá | 3:35 | Spanish

Lily and Victoria's mother returns home. The girls try to sneak out of the house, but they get caught by Mamá.

Victoria (Berta Ros) is asleep. Lily (Victoria Harris) comes in and wakes her up. She whispers they have to leave because their mother (Irma Monroig) is home. The girl's quietly get ready. Lily puts her coat on. Victoria goes out into the hall but then goes back to her bedroom to get her pet goldfish. When Victoria and Lily lean over the banister, they don't see anyone. They quietly sneak downstairs. Lily runs to the front door, but it's locked. Victoria drops the fish bowl. She turns to look down a hallway. Lily tells her not to look and to come with her instead. Victoria ignores her and keeps looking. Mamá comes into view. She's obviously some kind of supernatural entity. Mamá turns towards the girls, who are frozen in place. She takes a few slow steps towards them. She stretches her arms out to them. Then, Mamá quickly runs after them. Lily and Victoria scream and run back upstairs. Lily locks herself in one of the rooms. Victoria begs her to open the door. Lily ignores her. Victoria peeks around the corner. She screams as Mamá creeps closer and closer.

Mamá was created by siblings Andrés and Barbara Muschietti. Andrés wrote and directed it. Barbara was the producer. Mamá was turned into a feature film, also called Mama, in 2013. Guillermo del Toro was the executive producer. Andrés, Barbara, and Neil Cross wrote the screenplay. Andrés directed it.

I saw del Toro's Mama in the theater before I found out about Andrés and Barbara's short film version. I like both versions for different reasons. In del Toro's Mama, I like the backstory given to Mamá and the girls: Mamá was a ghost who "adopted" Lily and Victoria.

In the short film, you know something supernatural is going on, but you just don't know what it is exactly. Having some mystery in a horror movie makes the movie scarier. I find Mamá from Andrés and Barbara's movie scarier than Mamá from del Toro's movie. We don't know who, or what, Mamá is. Is she the ghost of Lily and Victoria's biological mom? (Or, maybe stepmom?) That could be why she's still around. She has daughters and a widowed partner, so she doesn't want to leave them alone by moving on to the other side. Maybe ghosts live in some sort of limbo that negatively affects their personalities.

If Mamá isn't the ghost of the biological mother or stepmother, what is she? Maybe she's like Mamá from del Toro's movie. Victoria and Lily live with a human family and Mamá was some kind of supernatural entity who "adopted" them at some point.

Links
Mamá IMDB