A lonely woman named Sue Ann suddenly befriends a group of teenagers and gives them a place in her basement to party and drink. But everything isn't as it seems and Sue Ann, now known as Ma might just have done it for other reasons.
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This type of horror/thriller is a very popular type of film as it isn't fully scary and will not have you constantly jumping, but they attempt to get under your skin. Creeping you out and shaking you to the core. Unfortunately though Ma, only manages to do that a few times and then gets itself a little bit confused and mixed up with the plot that they try to make out better than it really is.
Maggie and her mother Erica move back to the small town, which we later find out is where she grew up and went to high school. This places Maggie in with the children of Erica's former classmates, as they all just so happen to have children the same age now at high school together. Anyway as Maggie quickly makes friends and a crush develops on Andy, they try to get someone to get alcohol for them from a local shop. They don't have much luck until Sue Ann appears and decides to help them, after seeing the truck Andy is driving.
After she helps them she does it a few more times and invites the group back to her basement so they aren't driving around all night. This then develops to pretty much the whole high school partying at Ma's house. The nickname they develop for her, however we get to see that different events spark a memory and a traumatic experience Sue Ann experienced in high school which just so happened to be caused by Ben (Andy's father). This is where everything becomes rather muddled up and the film tries to do too many different things and the character changes were too extreme in such a short space of time in all honesty.
The main message from the film? Be nicer to people when you are teenagers as you never know what events might cast a shadow over someone's life. I mean what happened to Sue Ann was rather horrific, but at the same time her choice was silly to believe that Ben was at all interested. For her then to target the teenagers was rather sadistic and the final scene was not easy to watch.
I felt in the end though we were left with too many unanswered questions, like the treatment of her daughter was never explored properly. I mean I got the whole make sure that the same thing doesn't happen to her, but making her believe she was sick? Managing to steal so many drugs from the veterinary where she worked with out the Doctor noticing anything? It was just well quite frankly all over the place. From Maggie arriving and then how everything progressed just felt like it could have been three or four different films.
A shame really as it did have the potential with a very impressive cast. Especially Octavia Spencer in the main role, a different style to what we are used to seeing from her. She did manage to be creepy and totally crazy all at the same time. Also with the ability to feel sorry for her. But who has Allison Janney in a film and has her in for a couple of minutes? Totally wasted! This is the second film I have seen Diana Silvers in less than a week and she certainly has a lot of potential.
