Umma review: Sandra Oh’s limp ghost story is an odd companion to Turning Red

Horror is part of Sam Raimi’s filmmaking DNA, whether he’s going all-out with slapstick gorefests like the Evil Dead Trilogy, adding movies about monsters to Spider-Man films or infusing thrillers with his stories. One Simple Plan Oder The gift With a subdued, creepy dread. So it’s only natural that he’d spend some of his big-studio capital on producing horror movies —And it’s downright confounding how few of them have been any good. Cracking B-movies like Don’t Breathe and CrawlThese are not the norm. A disappointing example of There are 30 Nights a YearAnd BoogeymanThe rule has been.

Raimi’s faltering track record as a horror producer isn’t the responsibility of Iris K. Shim, the writer-director behind Umma. But watching this resolutely unscary, poorly paced, Raimi-produced horror picture, it’s difficult to avoid a pang of longing for the energy and aggression of films like Raimi’s Drag Me To Hell, which he described in promotional interviews as a “spook-a-blast.” The simplest definition of that term is an amped-up funhouse horror movie, which Umma isn’t, apart from one Drag me to HellA ghostly force drags the heroine off-screen. This wildness is short-lived. It lasted 83 minutes and was short but not slow. UmmaMissed-opportunity scene piles up, calling for an audience-rattling leap or a wicked sense of humor.

Instead, Amanda (Eve is killedSandra Oh, co-star in the movie, spends much of her time moping. Amanda has escaped her domineering mother in Korea (the movie’s title comes from “mother” in Korean) and relocated to America, where she and her teenage daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart) make honey at a remote little bee farm. The only person they have contact with is Dermot Mulroney, a local who sells their honey online and does Amanda’s bookkeeping. They barter with each other to keep a small e-commerce company running. They live off electricity. No lights, no phones and no internal combustion engines. Visitors must turn off their cars motors immediately they arrive at the property. Amanda asserts that electricity makes her sick, which is a clear lie about her past.

That past doesn’t exactly creep back into Amanda’s life — it basically marches up to her door and explains that it will be haunting her more directly going forward. Early in the film, Amanda’s uncle from Korea shows up to bring her the cremated remains of her recently deceased mother. Shortly thereafter, Amanda starts seeing the ghostly, angry figure of her unsettled mother, just as Chris starts to chafe at her mother’s protectiveness. Chris, like every 17-year old movie star, is secretly exploring college options until her controlling parent discovers. Amanda views this as a betrayal, just like every parent who is domineering in a film. The conflict is so familiar and so cartoonishly rendered that it’s difficult to take seriously. (Wouldn’t it be more insidious if Amanda undermined her daughter subtly, at least at first?)

Amanda becomes more anxious and jumpy when Chris starts to pull away. Say, could Amanda start turning into her mother if she isn’t careful? Amanda asked this question many times loudly, just in case it wasn’t clear. Many horror films rely upon silent, festering waves of unease. UmmaThere are at most five scenes in the story where one character stands before another to give exposition about his or her past and/or current feelings. There’s no mystery, no imagery, no subtext, and between these glum confessions, the story generates an astonishing lack of momentum. The story amounts to a series of events that could have been sufficiently terrifying in other contexts: childhood traumas, ghosts and becoming the monster you used to fear.

Photo by Saeed Ayani/Sony Pictures

These themes have inspired many notable horror films, the most recent being Shim’s. Relic, RunningAnd The Hereditary. Comparatively, UmmaThe safety belt is on and the actors appear unassisted, making them look uncomfortable but not really scared. Oh’s performance as horror star is very static. Rather than letting loose with frustration or fear, committing to Amanda’s inner monster, or varying her performance in any way, she looks continuously dismayed, conveying all the soul-shaking terror of someone dreading a long bus ride. Stewart fares a little better, especially when she’s paired with Odeya Rush as a more socialized girl her age. But the movie doesn’t have much imagination when it comes to the effects of her character’s near-total isolation. Chris is a normal, well-adjusted young girl who doesn’t have a cellphone.

There’s no sense of wildness to anyone or anything in Umma, and it’s hard to make an effective movie about the loss of control when the filmmaking seems reluctant to disturb anyone. Even the handful of memorable images — a vision of Amanda’s mother shot through a beekeeper’s mask, or a Raimi-esque upside-down shot of a character bursting from the earth in the moonlight — dissipate quickly, as if embarrassed to hint at anything fun. The most interesting thing about the movie is purely coincidental: It arrives a week after Pixar’s wonderful It’s time to turn redThe animated film also stars Oh as a mother who simultaneously kills her child, and live in terror of her own mother. Parents who are a domineering force and whose children have grown up watching animated films will be furious at the thought of their older children seeing them. It’s time to turn redThey are encouraged to go with their families. Umma instead. It won’t scare them, but it may bore them back into submission.

UmmaOn March 18, the movie opens in theatres