Ma is a new movie by Tate Taylor, starring Octavia Spencer. This film promises suspense and lots of terror!
- Ma is a 2019 American psychological horror film
- It is directed by Tate Taylor
- Who co-wrote the screenplay with Scotty Landes
- It stars Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, Luke Evans, McKaley Miller, Missi Pyle, Corey Fogelmanis, Marjay Ross, Gianni Paolo, and Dante Brown
- And follows a group of teenagers who befriend a lonely middle-aged woman
- This woman allows them to party in her basement
- Only to have strange things begin to happen
- The film is produced by Jason Blum
- Through his Blumhouse Productions company
- As well as Taylor and John Norris
- Ma was released in the United States on May 31, 2019
- By Universal Pictures
- It received mixed reviews from critics
- Who praised Spencer’s performance but said the film didn’t take full advantage of its premise
- Ma came together as a result of Tate Taylor’s desire to direct a film about “something fucked up”
- And a conversation he had with Octavia Spencer in which she told him that she was “sick of only being offered the same role and never getting to be a lead”
- The two are longtime friends, having worked together in films such as The Help and Get on Up
- Jason Blum and Tate Taylor, who have been friends for a few years, knew each other socially
- Taylor went to Blum’s office, saying, “I want to do something really fucked up”
- Taylor read Scotty Landes’ script of the film
- Which Blumhouse Productions had bought the day before
- Although the original draft was written with a white woman in the title role, Taylor immediately thought about Spencer
- He went out in the hall, called Spencer, and asked her if she wants to be in a horror film
- Without reading the script, Spencer boarded the project
- There was no backstory of the title role in the original script
- Which made her “a complete monster that no audience member could sympathize with”
- They made it a priority to come up with an authentic backstory for the role
- Principal photography on the film started in February 2018
- Filming took place in Mississippi
- Part of the film was shot in Natchez, Mississippi
- Filming wrapped in March 2018
- The first trailer was released on February 13, 2019
- In the United States and Canada, Ma was released alongside Godzilla: King of the Monsters and Rocketman
- And is projected to gross around $20 million in its opening weekend
- The film made $1.4 million from Thursday night previews
- On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 64%
- Based on 88 reviews
- With an average rating of 5.81/10
- The site’s critical consensus reads, “Octavia Spencer’s performance overpowers many of Ma’s flaws, but uneven pacing and a labored story keep this thriller from fully realizing its unhinged potential”
- On Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating to reviews, the film has a weighted average score of 53 out of 100
- Based on 31 critics
- Indicating “mixed or average reviews”
Got anything to add?