Umma Review

Cast:
* Sandra Oh as Amanda
* Odeya Rush as River
* Fivel Stewart as Chris
* Dermot Mulroney as Danny
* MeeWha Alana Lee as Amanda’s Mother
* Tom Yi as Amanda’s Uncle

Story: Amanda and her daughter live a quiet life on an American farm, but when the remains of her estranged mother arrive from Korea, Amanda becomes haunted by the fear of turning into her own mother.

There’s a common fear among adults that they will become their own parents as they get older. Sometimes it’s played for laughs, as young people dread taking on the “old” personality quirks of their parents. Sometimes it’s played for dramatic effect, as we don’t want to take on the worst qualities we saw growing up. The concept of trauma beng passed down has come up a lot in recent film discourse, and now there’s a movie which tries to play it off as a spooky ghost movie.

It’s not successful.

The most disappointing films of any type can be when you can see what the filmmaker intended, or at least part of the idea that they had when coming up with the story. That’s the case with Umma, as there is a great idea of a story here. A woman abandons her abusive mother and lives in hiding, only for the spirit of her recently deceased mother to start to haunt her. There’s a lot of drama and legitimate terror that could, in theory, be pulled from that idea.

However it feels like the script isn’t quite able to pull it off and isn’t even sure what story it’s telling. It mixes in a little bit of everything in attempt to be more three-dimensional. Is it a character study? Is it a ghost story? Is it just a drama with vague supernatural elements? Yes. It’s all of those things and at 83 minutes, there’s not enough time to pull them off well at all. So it’s kind of a mess and all of its half-baked ideas never really work.

It’s really disappointing, in a way, because Sandra Oh is really trying. She is absolutely committed to the role, whether that’s the quieter moments or the more over-the-top melodrama. She gives it her all for a movie that is honestly, way below her talents. She is really trying to make something out of this character and at times there are brief moments when she’s able to elevate the material. But even a good performance can get bogged down in a script that is doing nothing for anyone in the cast.

If the film is meant to be horror, then it fails. The only ‘scares’, what little there are, come from jump scares. They’re not even the kind of jump scares that follow any kind of suspense, which is how one is properly executed. Instead it’s lazy. Loud noises. Someone suddenly coming into frame, that sort of thing. There are no real attempts to get under the skin as this seems to graduate from the school of thought that ‘startling’ is the same. It’s not. It’s what separates a great scare from a cat scare.

If the film is meant to be a drama, it fails there too. Any attempts to provide any dramatic tension or suspense veer more into melodrama than anything else. There’s a scene in which Amanda slaps her daughter, then gets slapped back, that was more comical than anything else. There are other moments, in which we are perhaps meant to be scared for Chris, but we aren’t because the atmosphere is all wrong.

The script also tends to forget or ignore plot points it sets up. Amanda has a belief that electricity will make her sick. But when the truth is exposed, it’s pushed aside to keep the plot moving. Chris wants to go to colle.ge It’s technically part of the plot, but it’s more there just to give her the bare minimum of development. There are hints that Amanda’s mother is abusive, but it’s only really hints and then at the end it seems to actually try to justify it.

The movie is so rushed and jumps from plot point to plot point that it has no time to build to anything. So it’s a series of half-measures to limp to an unsatisfying conclusion. It’s not scary, it’s not dramatic, it’s not suspenseful. The movie fails to deliver on any conceivable level, making the run time feel much longer than it actually is.

In the end, the titular Umma didn’t want to be forgotten. The film, however, probably should have been.

3.5

The final score: review Bad

The 411

Even a dedicated performance from Sandra Oh is not enough to save a script that is wrought with half-baked ideas. The scares are lazy and formulaic while the drama is heavy-handed and over-the-top. There's nothing worth recommending. Like the title character, it's best left buried.