Mara had the potential to be its own original horror film that instead chose to rely on the modern horror movie formula. The sleep paralysis scenes were done very well and created suspense that was unfortunately ruined by the jump scares.
Mara is a film that focuses on the nightmarish human occurrence known as sleep paralysis, in which people seem to wake up in the middle of the night unable to move and most often see demonic images in their rooms. In the case of this film, there is a demon known as Mara who comes to people through sleep paralysis and after the fourth night of seeing the demon, the victim dies. We follow a psychologist who works for the police department as she investigates a woman who has claimed to see this demon, she quickly discovers that the demon is now after her.
Sleep paralysis is something that has always interested me and I have always found the concept of it to be rather scary when I found out that this was a horror movie based on that concept I was excited. I have seen documentaries on the subject but never a narrative film. Although the film seems to focus more on the demon that they have created instead of the idea of sleep paralysis. Most of the film is spent researching Mara and attempting to find out how to stop her. Despite dealing with a subject that has very few films centered around it, Mara decides to go the route of nearly every other popular modern horror movie by relying on jump scares and loud noises instead of genuine suspense or horrific imagery. There are a few exceptions though we’ll get to that.
My biggest issue with the film was that nearly the whole film felt familiar. Having seen all the Insidious, Conjuring and other big horror franchises, I have become all too aware of the formula they all follow and it is tiring to watch another film that follows it to a T. This made the film’s plot rather predictable and took away from the overall investment. Even the overall look of the film is dimly lit with slight green tones much like the other mentioned franchises. With the demon only being able to kill while the victim is asleep there was also a rather large Nightmare on Elm Street vibe. There was even a bathtub scene in this film though it was far less iconic and exactly what you think is going to happen, happens. That can be said for almost the entirety of the film, what you expect is was happens, it is just not the most original film. The same can be said for the characters of the film as well.
There are many characters that recur throughout the film, though I would say there are only two main characters. The police psychologist Kate, and local basket case Dougie. With Kate, we first get a slight hint at what her childhood was like. She first alludes to her mother being institutionalized and it had quite an effect on her. We are then spoon fed her whole backstory. It seems that this is done so that you sympathize were her and understand not only why she has this career but also why it means so much to her to not feel like she is going insane. This detail about her past helps to characterize Kate and helps to explain her motivations, though I don’t believe it was necessary to explicitly state the whole story. I feel that the brief mention of her past was enough for the audience to understand how she is affected by this and it is just as effective as the full explanation. Aside from this detail of her past, we do not really learn anything else about this character. We see her jogging and making a smoothie a couple of times so we understand that fitness is a priority to her, but aside from fitness and what happened to her mother, we don’t know anything about her. If we were to have seen more interactions between Kate and other characters that allowed her personality to shine through, I believe that the audience would have been able to identify with her character further and would have been able to root her on more.
Dougie was the second main character of this film, his role was to be the seemingly insane expert on the demon Mara. This seems to have become a trope for 2010s horror movies, many films will have the character who acts insane but also has a plethora of knowledge on whatever it is that is the threat. In this film, Kate talks to Dougie after he has a disturbing outburst at a sleep paralysis anonymous meeting. She goes to his home to ask him for help after she realizes what he has been saying was true and that is where she is able to learn the most about Mara. Despite being the character with the second most screen time, we don’t learn much about Dougie at all. The audience doesn’t get a reason to care about him other than the fact that he is going through the same thing that Kate is. Aside from that, he is just an erratic man obsessed with this demon.
The best thing about this film was the design of the demon. It was tall, very slender and moved in a slow broken manner that was very disturbing. Sure, this design is something that has been used in many films such as the second Conjuring film or the Babadook, but it is especially effective in Mara and fits the theme very well. Mara was always very creepy to look at and was something that you would want to look away from, especially when it was moving towards you. Nearly every one of the sleep paralysis dream sequences starts off beautiful. The pacing is changed and becomes much slower than other popular horror films. They all start with Kate realizing that she can’t move and then it becomes a rather suspenseful, super slow paced game of I-spy. The camera shifts to her point of view and she begins to slowly look around the room to see what is there. The scenes are all at times when it is dark and it is rather difficult to distinguish what is and is not a figure, the viewer finds themselves with their eyes slowly scanning the screen looking to find the demon while simultaneously hoping that they don’t. The scenes were highly effective and were very well done. That is until you find Mara. Nearly every time Mara is found in the room, there is immediately an audio jump scare. This was very annoying, every time there was a sleep paralysis scene, I was very impressed with how it was done but every time it was ruined by a cheap jump scare at the end. Aside from a couple of exceptions, there wasn’t even a visual accompaniment to the scare, the subject would not more or would walk at a casual pace out of frame. The subject rarely would jump towards the screen or move in such a way to justify the loud burst of sound.
Overall:
Mara had the potential to be its own original horror film that instead chose to rely on the modern horror movie formula. The sleep paralysis scenes were done very well and created suspense that was unfortunately ruined by the jump scares. The characters were undeveloped and were difficult to care about. Lastly, the overall plot was as predictable as it was forgettable.
