Sandra Oh

Amanda and her daughter Chris live a quite life on an American farm off the grid, producing honey that a friend of theirs in town then sells for them. There are a lot of things about her past that Amanda never told her daughter, and when Amanda's uncle arrives from Korea with her mother's ashes and most precious possessions, everything starts coming to a head. Amanda is forced to face her past, her painful relationship with her mother, and her complicated feelings about Chris's wishes for her own future.

This was a decent if not exactly scary movie. It definitely tried to be scary. One of Amanda's mother's possessions was a creepy mask, there were plenty of moments in darkness and dim lighting (unfortunately to the point that it was hard to tell what was going on sometimes), and Amanda clearly had some trauma connected to her past that lightning and electricity reminded her about. But something about the way the movie was paced and the "scary" moments were filmed didn't quite work for me.

That said, I appreciated Amanda and Chris's relationship, and Amanda's struggles with her feelings about her mother and all the aspects of her Korean heritage that she abandoned when she left. Once upon a time, Amanda might have loved her mother as much as Chris loved her, but both of them reached a point where they needed to leave, although Chris's situation was much less dark than Amanda's.

Umma is part of a growing number of recent movies that deal with issues surrounding generational trauma. Although Amanda's mother was cruel to her and abused her, there was a definite effort to portray her in a nuanced way. She wasn't a cardboard monster, but rather a person who'd ended up in a situation she couldn't tolerate or figure out a way to escape. Unfortunately, instead of supporting her daughter and trying to build a better life for her, she instead expected her to go through just as much pain. The question was whether Amanda would fall into the same pattern where her own daughter was concerned.

This was worth watching, but it's not ending up on my keeper pile.

Extras:

Trailers for other movies.

(Original review posted on A Library Girl's Familiar Diversions.)… (mehr)