'Mama' Trailer: A Mother Never Forgets

The trailer for Mama doesn't mess around — it gives you a feral child within seconds, and ultimately gets to some effectively creepy ghost scares by the time the title card hits, all without feeling like it has given away the entire film.

Jessica Chastain (decked out in a black bob and dark wardrobe that highlights her vague resemblance to a young Angelina Jolie) plays the woman who ends up being a surrogate mother for two children who lived alone in the woods after their parents were killed. But the childrens' real mother may not be entirely gone, and she might not be entirely OK with the new family arrangement. See the trailer below.

Though films like this have become very common, I still like a well-made one, and Mama looks like it is very well put together. The photography looks good, the setup works, and Chastain has proven to be reliable in almost any context.

Here's a long synopsis. Mama opens on January 18, with Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, and Isabelle Nelisse co-starring. Apple has the trailer in HD.

Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed.  When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night.

Five years ago, sisters Victoria and Lilly vanished from their suburban neighborhood without a trace.  Since then, their Uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), have been madly searching for them.  But when, incredibly, the kids are found alive in a decrepit cabin, the couple wonders if the girls are the only guests they have welcomed into their home.

As Annabel tries to introduce the children to a normal life, she grows convinced of an evil presence in their house.  Are the sisters experiencing traumatic stress, or is a ghost coming to visit them?  How did the broken girls survive those years all alone?  As she answers these disturbing questions, the new mother will find that the whispers she hears at bedtime are coming from the lips of a deadly presence.