Umma Review
Iris K. Shim took a major risk with her feature debut, Umma (2022). In the hands of a less talented team, Umma could have very easily slid into heavy-handed and clunky territory, joining the leagues of reductionist morality tales that often pop up in the horror genre. However, Shim elegantly sidesteps the film’s many opportunities for an easy moralizing fable to settle on something more sophisticated, ambiguous, and mature.
The premise seems relatively simple: the common fear of “becoming your mother” is made literal when Amanda (Sandra Oh) receives the cremated ashes of her mother (MeeWha Alana Lee), who then slowly begins to possess her body. Amanda realizes that there are a lot of similarities between her relationship with her mother and her developing relationship with her own daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart), as her literal possession becomes a metaphor for a less supernatural transformation into someone a lot like her mother.
The simplicity of this “literally becoming your mother” concept is deceptive, however, as the film refuses to settle for any of the low-hanging fruit that it could have easily taken. The film reveals early on that Amanda is a victim of child abuse, making her fears of becoming her mother more urgent and terrifying because they pose a direct threat to Chris. Again, this revelation could lead to an easy, morally simplistic film by casting the mother as an unambiguous, evil monster and the obvious villain of an anti-child-abuse fable.
However, the film makes a point to explore Amanda’s mother’s own struggles and pain, and the character is herself cast in a more complicated light. The film refuses to provide easy answers: obviously, abusing a child is inexcusable. However, the film explores the struggles with racism, misogyny, and mental health that Amanda’s mother faces to make a strong point about how monsters are much more often created by systemic social forces, rather than simply born monstrous.
As much as Amanda can never accept or approve of her mother’s abusive acts, she also struggles to unambiguously hate her. Importantly, Amanda’s complicated emotions are never criticized or judged; she is given room to process her abusive childhood on her own terms, with all of the complexity and contradictory feelings that this entails. Amanda’s struggle is brilliantly handled by a script that is fully comfortable with ambiguity and difficult experiences as it examines structures and cycles of oppression and abuse.
Sandra Oh is, unsurprisingly, more than capable of tackling such a complicated character. Amanda is, at once, a fiercely protective mother, a terrified abuse victim with posttraumatic stress, a confident entrepreneur and single mother, a fun-loving beekeeper, and a woman being slowly possessed by a vengeful spirit. Oh manages to fuse all of these elements flawlessly and seamlessly into one fullu-realized and always nuanced performance. Oh continues to remind audiences why she has become one of the most beloved living actresses.
The horror elements in the film are consistently chilling, and they always add to the character work and dramatic themes rather than distracting from them. Shim always keeps the horror perfectly out of focus and out of the light; it always takes a second or two to notice a ghostly shadow or figure hiding in a dark corner, but they’re not so hidden that audiences will miss them completely. This “corner of your eye” effect keeps the film sufficiently suspenseful and eerie.
The lighting design for the film is a big part of what makes it so effectively scary. Terrified of electricity because of an incident in her childhood, Amanda does not allow so much as a cell phone near the farm where she lives. This plot device means that there is little to no electric light in the world of the film, allowing for a natural darkness and extremely limited lighting that creates a constant sense of discomfort and unease. There is not so much as a flashlight on Amanda’s farm, and the characters’ reliance on gas lamps and candles sufficiently ups the chill factor.
The one area that needs substantial work is Shim’s ability to write teenagers. While Amanda is written with a sophistication and nuance that only the likes of Oh could pull off, Chris and her friend River (Odeya Rush) are written with a simplistic angst that diminishes the acting potential of Stewart and Rush. The dialogue reads more like a boomer’s idea of what a teenager is supposed to sound like than how an actual person would speak, and it is full of overused “I’m not like other girls” teen clichés about how “different is good” and “normal people are boring.”
Chris’ moody mistreatment of her struggling mother and stunted lines renders her nearly unlikable. This does not reflect poorly on the actresses, who do the best that they can with a script that is as bad with teen dialogue as it is great with adult dialogue. Also disappointing – but not surprising – is the way that compulsory heterosexuality prevents what could have been an endearing love story. For all of the awkward writing, Rush and Stewart have an undeniable on-screen chemistry, and a keener directorial eye could have noted this chemistry and done something with it.
Overall, Umma is a resounding first feature for a promising filmmaker. While it could use a bit more development – and better-written teenagers – what is most exciting about Umma is the way that it leaves audiences excited for the future development of Iris K. Shim as an emerging voice in horror. Constantly careful to avoid easy morality tales and never eager to take the easy way out, Umma is an ambitious and nuanced exploration of intergenerational pain, trauma, racism, immigration, and child abuse. It also does not hold back on the horror, being a welcome and chilling ghost story with a huge heart.
Watch Umma
