Umma (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

Even the most familiar stories can be powerful when told with the right conviction.

Isolated in rural Americana, a solitary apiarist homeschools her daughter and supports herself by selling organic honey. Amanda (Sandra Oh) is a first-generation Korean-American who abhors technology; their pastoral life is only ever intruded upon by a local shopkeeper (Dermot Mulroney), whose occasional friendly visits represent Amanda's only social interactions as well as her only means of making money through selling her organic honey. Her teenage daughter Chrissy (Fivel Stewart) doesn't seem too troubled by this arrangement, and tells us fairly early into the film that Amanda has some kind of intense sensitivity or unusual allergy to electricity. They don't have phones or cars, and at night they rely on candles and oil lanterns. We get the impression there is something traumatizing in Amanda's past -- based on a nasty opening flashback -- and it feels like the two women might be in some kind of witness protection program.

That's not quite the case, which becomes apparent when a mysterious car drives right up to their house. Amanda's Korean uncle pops out, informing her that her mother has passed away. The camera lingers on Amanda's face, and really this is where we must express gratitude and joy that Sandra Oh is our star. She deserves so much more starring screen time than she's ever gotten, and this film capitalizes on her profound ability to convey so many complex emotions in wordless looks. Her dedication to this role and this story saves it from tipping over the brink into typical B-movie vagaries. Amanda's complex reaction to her uncle's news is short-lived as her uncle -- without any ado at all -- shames her for her estranged relationship with her Umma (Korean for "mother") and her apparent abandonment of her culture. Then he gifts Amanda with a suitcase containing Umma's ashes with a morbid warning that her spirit is angry and will be until she is properly laid to rest.

Amanda's bitterness is left unexplained for a while, but when she unceremoniously dumps her mother's urn in the basement, we know it's only a matter of time before something dreadful happens. Almost immediately, Amanda is woken by nightmares of her past; her waking life doesn't fare much better when she discovers that Chrissy has been secretly requesting more information from colleges she might attend. The multiple generations of women now in the same house will unravel in the whirlwind of expectations and behaviors that lead each to question the extent to which they are turning into their own mothers. Some generational curses hit a little closer to home than we expect.

As a horror movie, Umma is pretty typical of its genre. Each beat is predictable, from the foreboding portents of the uncle's visit and the oddly edited dream sequences (that feel lifted out of early '00s ghost flicks) to Umma's eventual attempts at possession. Director and writer Iris K. Shim handled the jump-scares well enough to keep me on the edge of my seat in an otherwise comfortable way, and the effects are pretty darn effective for being, one imagines, quite low-budget. But where this one rises above is in its casting -- may I continue to praise Sandra Oh? -- and in its heart. Shim clearly feels passionately about this story and works hard to hitch the film to Oh's emotive power, reigning in what could be flyaway terror and spectacle to make this film more about the delicate lines between three generations of women of color. This movie is more about the aftereffects of immigration, assimilation, and family trauma than about a vengeful ghost.

With so much on its mind, I might have preferred a longer approach (this one clocks in under 90 minutes) that wouldn't have sacrificed so much potent drama. I certainly would have liked a bit more exploration of its weighty themes and a few more chances for Oh and the rest of this solid cast to shine. In fact, having recently watched Minari again, which is remarkably similar in many ways, I'm imagining an odd crossover that makes both films more satisfying to me.