Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		2.5
Overall		4.0

Ma Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman August 22, 2019

Oscar winner Octavia Spencer turns in the most complex performance of her career in Director Tate Taylor's (The Girl on the Train) Ma, the story of a wounded soul carrying deeply seeded and painfully weighty baggage that is yearning to be exorcised through violence. The film takes the Horror genre through somewhat uncharted paces, exploring a scarred figure from the outside in and eventually pushing back out, removing a pleasant façade in favor of a fully different face of fear. It's approachable even in its complexity and blends pure entertainment value with well designed character depth, capped by performance intensity. It's one of the better films of 2019.

Erica Thompson (Juliette Lewis) and her daughter Maggie (Diana Silvers) are moving back to the small Ohio town where Erica grew up; her marriage has failed and it's time for the family to get a fresh, if not familiar, start on the road to recovery. Erica makes several quick friends, including a boy named Andy (Corey Fogelmanis) who is attracted to her, and she to he. One day, the group solicits help in buying alcohol and comes across a kindly middle aged woman named Sue Ann (Octavia Spencer) who not only buys the booze but eventually befriends the teens and supplies her basement as the designated party area for the the group, whose number quickly swells when word spreads of Sue Ann's, whom the teens call Ma, generous, and illegal, hospitality. But little does the group know that Ma harbors a deep resentment and clings to a number of emotional scars from her own high school days, centered around a relationship with Andy's father Ben (Luke Evans), that may spell far more trouble than a brush with the law for those she has taken under her wing and into her basement.

Movie titles don’t come much shorter, and neither do killers come much more frightening, frightening not because of a mask and intimidating posture but because of the subtlety of the evil, the mask of real life and a smile hiding the festering wounds and the want for revenge. Ma tells a curiously devilish story centered around a curiously devilish character, a woman who is anything but the face of evil but whose soul has transformed over the years into one thirsty for blood, for finding a place in the world by removing those things that have hurt her from it. It is more than 30 minutes before the movie begins to explore, ever so briefly, why it is Sue Ann hosts the partiers and details the past pains that have shaped her character. It’s not particularly groundbreaking stuff, but where the movie succeeds is in its slow-burn character turn, as Sue Ann lures her prey and as the audience slowly comes to understand what drives her deeply hidden but existentially evident bloodlust.

Spencer is wonderful in the lead role, turning on an everywoman charm who by all appearances is someone anyone would want in their lives, and not just because she plays the role of great liquor facilitator. She’s generous, kind, peppy, and Spencer inhabits these characteristics with an easy come charm evident from the outset. But she’s also more than capable of hinting at who she is beyond the façade, dropping a smile or fixing a gaze at just the right moment to maintain the illusion but sell the audience on what’s brewing underneath. The characters are none the wiser, of course, blinded by their own greed for taking full advantage, and then some, of her hospitality and condoning of their behavior. As the frivolity and fun party beats eventually turn to cold-blooded violence, the movie proves as intoxicatingly mismatched as Spencer’s character. Without delving into spoiler territory, the film does not take any traditional Horror beats, including who lives and who dies, which is one of its greatest qualities; it absolutely turns the genre on its head, building one of the most simple and human but highly effective genre films to come around in some time.

Ma Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ma was shot digitally and the source translates quite nicely to Blu-ray in what is a fairly typical new release image. Light noise sprinkles about in modest-to-low light conditions but the picture is otherwise free of any obvious source or encode blemishes. Details are handled well and presented nicely. The image reproduces essentials like faces and clothes with the expected level of 1080p sophistication while some of the environments, like Sue Ann's basement, reveal an assortment of odds and ends textures with inviting and location-defining sharpness. Colors are of stable, reliable excellence, revealing essential shades with good, balanced contrast and no feel for airiness or excess depth. Skin tones appear true and black levels hold firm. Not much to say about this one. It's perfectly good all-around.

Ma Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The included DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack pleases from the outset, offering richly defined instrumental and lyric detail in the opening song. Elements spread around the stage; the fronts carry the bulk but the surrounds pick up just the right amount of complimentary detail. The same goes for the following school hallway and casino floor scenes, where light din easily and seamlessly pulls the listener into the environments. As the party gets kicking in Ma's basement, the track continues to show appropriately engaging liveliness in several party scenes. Once the film reaches its climax, the surrounds carry a well balanced feel for engulfing flames, punctuated by an explosion that delivers with hearty low end support. Dialogue delivery is clear and well prioritized from its front-center home.

Ma Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Ma's supplemental package is comprised of an alternate ending, deleted scenes, two short featurettes, and a trailer. A DVD copy of the film and a Movies Anywhere digital copy code are included with purchase. This release ships with an embossed slipcover.

• Alternate Ending (1080p, 2:01).
• Deleted Scenes (1080p, 11:23 total runtime): Included are Moving In, Brain Food, First Days, Late Bloomer, Mom's Earrings, Hobo Attack, Sex-Ed Interrupted, Dinner for Louie, Liquor Store Staredown, Fornicating Hooligans, Campus Creeping, and Long Distance Girlfriend.
• Creating Sue Ann (1080p, 2:50): Spencer and select cast and crew recount the plot and explore the Sue Ann character, including her mental state and costumes.
• Party At Ma's (1080p, 3:53): A look at the film's unique Horror beats, Tate Taylor's direction, and cast camaraderie and performances.
• Ma Theatrical Trailer (1080p, 2:34).

Ma Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Spencer previously worked with Tate on The Help, the film for which she won her Oscar. Ma is an entirely different kind of film with its own challenges and a unique focus on personal deterioration born of a singular moment of humiliation. It's eerily complex and effectively engrossing, even if it takes its time building and peering into its title character. It's a refreshing rebrand of the Horror genre, a more open yet more involved and layered story of deeply rooted interior torture that begs to be loosed on the world. Universal's Blu-ray is very well rounded, delivering high-end video and audio presentations and a fair little sprinkling of extra content. Highly recommended.