My review: Octavia Spencer kills, kisses and owns schlock

My, a new thriller by Blumhouse and director Tate Taylor (L & # 39; s help), is so upset, so so much there, that the number of times I found myself thinking:Wait what?"Eclipse all sense of the real quality of the film. My it's a garbage can, but the right kind – it's fun all the way down.

The good news about My will it surprise any spectator at least once? The bad news is that the film, which runs Octavia Spencer (OscarThe shape of the water, L & # 39; s help) in the boogeyman while her friendship with a group of local high school students is resorbed, does not turn the interesting ideas she poses into anything other than dressing up and missing opportunities.

When the trailer My was released for the first time, rumors ranged from the idea that the stereotype of the "black woman in anger" would be respected to the excitement of subverting the archetype of "mammy" to which black women are so often relegated to cinema. The short answer to the question of what exactly My accomplishes is: ni. Instead, his immediate legacy is as the first fodder for a guilty pleasure list.

[[[[Ed. Note: this review contains mild spoilers for My.]

In her first and much-anticipated lead role, Spencer portrays the role of Sue Ann, nicknamed "Ma" by teenage girls in the area after she began buying them alcohol and letting them use her basement for parties. His attachment to high school students, however, quickly becomes obsessive, and not as innocent as it initially appeared. It is no coincidence that all the children she enjoys with are those of her former high school classmates.

In this regard, My is titled in the same way as movies like Predator or Dracula are – Ma is the villain of the story, but she is also the main attraction. The call of My not to see if adolescents (led by BooksmartDiana Silvers (the new girl in town) survive their new friendship; It's by seeing exactly what Ma has in store for them, especially since it's obvious that Taylor has no intention of keeping the film on track. My is designed for spectators to scream in horror, shout for joy, tweet in shock and record screen shots in the act of oblivion. My hit a sweet spot in the kind of schlock. It's good enough to be nice and bad enough to go wild.

This pleasure, however, can be a temporary thrill. The film plunges into ideas that it simply forgets or is not aware of existing, later. In an interview with GQ, Taylor stated that the film had no intentional commentary on the race, with the exception of a specific scene in which a black teenager has his face painted in white, which partly explains why the race problems that arise in the world. the movie will be ignored. It is worth noting that Ma is one of the few people of color precious in the city, that Spencer has often been relegated to the rank of plays in which she plays non-horrible variations of Ma, and that Ma is still an antagonist.

Spencer's performance prevents intentional mockery from sinking the film. Having to play a lead role rather than being part of the cast, she unleashes herself, fully engaging in Ma's manic energy – she makes plans, she makes the robot – without harming the more vulnerable emotions that Ma finally reveals. . At first, a tense sequence sees her shoot a gun at a teenager who gives her a little too much laughter before laughing and playing it like a joke. His bait and switch between kindness and death becomes almost Misery-as in the second half of the film, because his quest for vengeance seems to feed him from his human past.

His performance enriches a material that becomes more and more floating as secrets are revealed. As the recent Perfection, My uses trauma as the keystone of his plot in a way that does not feel fully won. It is impossible to say more without ruining the film, but there is something wrong with Ma's film positioning as a villain and his exploration of his motivation.

My is finally a case of razzle-dazzle. Other odds (including a scenario clearly drawn from a recent murder case that I will not tie to keep from revealing it) further help blind spectators to see the holes in the execution of the story. This is the kind of film that is a bit too strong for us to talk about "guilty pleasure"; My is trashy in the best way possible, and ripe to win a sequel, how much the plot goes crazy, how much the movie is catch-all ("Do not make me drink alone!"), and how easily the title is screaming and otherwise proliferating. (MaaaaaaHopefully, Spencer's next main role will be as much fun and a bit more thoughtful.