[Mother of Fears] Nature vs Nurture in Mama (2013)

Welcome to Mother of Fears – a monthly column that will explore the various roles that mothers play within the horror genre. Mothers are a staple feature in horror movies, and yet, their stories, motivations, representations, and relationships with their children are so varied and complex that we never feel like we’re watching the same story twice. Every month I will take a look at a different mother from the world of horror, explore their story, and look at how they fit into the broader representation of women in horror.

TW: Suicide

Marketed as a supernatural horror movie, Mama (2013) is mainly the story of two young sisters, Victoria and Lily, who are failed by their father and find themselves in a battle for affection between real-life caregivers and the ghostly Mama.

Mama opens with Jeffery Desange kidnapping his two daughters as he faces the consequences of the 2008 financial crisis. After killing two co-workers and his wife in his mania, he ends up crashing his car and finding himself and his children stuck in the remote forest. After stumbling across an abandoned cabin, he brings the girls inside, intending to shoot them both before killing himself. However, an unseen force kills Jeffery before he can carry through his plan. 

The girls are stranded in the woods for the next five years, and while their social development seems to have been stunted, it’s clear something has been caring for them all this time. The girls are provided with cherries to eat and manage to survive their time in the wilderness. They are discovered by a search party, financed by their uncle, Lucas Desange, who never lost hope that he would find out what happened to his twin brother and his nieces. 

While Victoria adapts to her new life quite quickly, Lily, who was only one when she was abandoned in the woods, has little memory of life before the cabin. The girls say they were cared for by Mama, but because this is a horror movie, Dr Dreyfuess is quick to blame the girls’ trauma and believes Mama to be imaginary or another personality created by Victoria. 

However, Mama is all too real and is the ghost of a woman searching for her lost child. Edith Brennan fled from the asylum she was committed to, stealing her baby from the nuns who were caring for it. After finding herself trapped on the top of a cliff, Edith jumped with her baby in her arms into the water below. However, her baby hit a tree branch on the way down and was ripped from Edith’s arms before they both died. As she wandered the woods looking for her baby, she found Victoria and Lily and decided to care for them instead. 

Lucas is keen to look after the girls, having spent five years searching for them, which means that a ready-made family is thrust upon his girlfriend, Annabel. The first time we see Annabel she is celebrating a negative pregnancy test in the bathroom, so it’s clear motherhood is not on her agenda before Victoria and Lily pop up. However, she’s keen to provide the support that Lucas needs after the last few years, and so agrees to welcome the children into their lives. 

Mama doesn’t take too kindly to this shift in her family dynamic and is quick to make her presence known around the girls. Not only is it hard for her to be ripped away from the girls she cares for as if they were her own, but now she has to deal with Lucas and Annabel stepping on her toes. In a fit of rage, Mama attacks Lucas, causing him to fall down the stairs and end up in a coma. 

This means Annabel is thrown headfirst into motherhood, as she doesn’t even have Lucas around for emotional support. Not only that but Victoria and Lily have a lot of emotional distress to deal with, as well as acclimatising themselves to the outside world. Annabel has to help them through all this while learning to be a mother herself. 

Lily has no interest in leaving her cabin life behind, and only seeks comfort from Mama and her familiar routines. Victoria is more willing to adapt to her new life, but she knows that any bond she develops with Annabel will only make Mama angry. Having seen Mama murder her father years ago, Victoria knows how dangerous she can be, even if she seems to have the girls’ best interests at heart. 

After getting rid of Lucas, perhaps because of how much he looks like his twin brother, Mama simply lurks around, spending time with the girls when she can. However, when she starts to feel Victoria slipping away, she increases her presence. The last straw is when Annabel finally manages to break through to Lily, and she embraces Annabel’s love rather than shunning her. This is when Mama makes her move, attacking Annabel, and stealing the girls back to the site of her death in the 1800s. 

Through Dr Dreyfuss and the nightmares she starts having, Annabel learns all about Mama’s past and how she was separated from her child in death. While Mama’s twisting, ghostly form is frightening, it’s clear that Annabel doesn’t view Mama as a villain. She cries as she reads Mama’s file, realising the pain she must have gone through after she died to turn her into the creature she has become.

Because of this, Annabel is able to recognise Mama’s need to be reunited with her child in death to hopefully provide her with the peace she needs to move on. Not only that, it will give Lily and Victoria closure from this portion of their life, and allow them to move on as well. When Annabel pursues Mama into the woods, she brings the remains of Mama’s baby with her, which have spent the last two hundred years in a government facility as no one was able to claim them. 

By this point, Lucas has woken from his coma and left the hospital to join Annabel in the hunt for the girls, but he’s quickly knocked out by Mama as the real fight for the girls has always been between her and Annabel. Annabel hands over Mama’s baby, and she initially seems sated and transforms into a more human form. However, when she hears Lily calling for her, she reverts back to a monster. Even though it was her baby she longed for all those years of hunting in the woods, Lily and Victoria have since replaced her biological child. Her bond with them is much stronger after five years of mothering them, and her needs are not fulfilled by her baby’s remains. Even though that child is her blood, Lily and Victoria are more important to her because of the bond they share, and everything she has done to protect them since she first found them in the cabin. 

This is how Annabel feels about the girls as well, growing a bond with them she didn’t think was possible, and putting her life in danger to save them even though they aren’t her blood either. While Mama attacks Lucas with little care for his wellbeing, with Annabel she simply tries to thwart her attempts to rescue Lily and Victoria without really hurting her. Perhaps she recognises the motherly instinct in Annabel as well, and while she wants the girls all to herself, she doesn’t want to hurt a fellow mother in the process. 

However, by this point, Annabel’s determination has grown stronger, and even multiple encounters with Mama can’t make her back down. In a last-ditch attempt to save the girls, she grabs onto Victoria’s dressing gown tie. At this moment, Mama sees how hard Annabel is willing to fight, and also recognises that her bond with Victoria has grown weaker since she left the cabin. Perhaps she also knows that Victoria would be happier with Annabel, as she has taken steps to move on, unlike Lily who is keen to act as though nothing has changed. 

Mama and Victoria say a tearful goodbye to each other, recognising how important they were in each other’s lives at a specific time, but knowing they aren’t what they need for each other right now. For Lily, on the other hand, the bond with Mama is too strong. Mama’s love is all she’s ever known, and while she was beginning to bond with Annabel, she still chooses to go with Mama in the end. Mama wraps herself and Lily in her clothes as the two plummet to their deaths. Instead of the pain and fear Mama experienced the first time she fell from the cliff, this time she is wrapped up in her own world with Lily. As they fall in slow motion, the two press their heads together, smiling as Lily caresses Mama’s face. This unyielding love is what Mama has been looking for all these years, and though it’s not exactly a happy ending for Lily, she dies peacefully and loved by Mama.

Victoria is now with Annabel, knowing that’s what Mama thought was best for her. She was left behind in love and can hopefully look forward to a happy life now. Rather than being ripped away from her parents as she was before, Victoria knows that there were two women who loved her very much, but that her life with Annabel is the right choice.

While it’s not the start to motherhood that Annabel envisioned, it’s something that she throws herself into with all her strength. She fights for the girls, for their happiness, and for the right to be their mother. However, she also fights for Mama’s happiness, hoping that she can provide her with the peace she needs. Annabel takes motherhood head-on, and comes out on top, and ready to be there for Victoria.

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