I saw the Spanish/Canadian horror film Mama, which was a very pleasant surprise. Didn't expect much from it, but it was great fun. Two little girls are left abandoned in the woods after their father goes mental. Thought dead, they are found alive five years later. They've gone feral and it appears they have been brought up by something scary which they call Mama. When they are taken in by their uncle and his girlfriend, Mama follows them.
It's a little too reliant on jump scares and a thunderous score, but the film is very stylish, genuinely creepy and often quite beautiful. It doesn't all make sense and the characters do dumb horror film things (when investigating a spooky cabin in the forrest you believe is the home of something scary, you should always do so in the middle of the night), but it has a fairy tale quality that gives it a feel that it doesn't quite take place in our world. The film is more intriguing in the first half than in the second when the conventional horror tropes kick in, but at least when Mama fully reveals herself towards the end, she doesn't disappoint. I thought it was all CGI, but the creature was mostly played by the skinny actor who played the horrible thing in the attic in [REC]. Jessica Chastain, who seems to be in every second film these days, plays the lead as the goth rocker girlfriend who finds herself saddled with the girls. She may not convince as a bad girl with her Joan Jett wig but she is fine when her maternal side kicks in.
It was expanded from a 3 minute short which caught Guillermo del Toro's eye:
