21 Days of Spooky: Mamá (short film, 2008)

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21 Days of Spooky is not about pop culture that sets out to fright you with brain-eating, viscerae-hanging, slash-killing scenes, but with thoughts that linger and persist on your life long after you've watched them. Or are just downright creepy. Tonight's spooky: Andy Muschietti's 2008 short film Mamá. Some spoilers ahead.

What's it about?: A girl must spring to action once her little sister tells her "mamá" has returned.

Three minutes. Only 180 seconds does this short film last. And, even in its very short length, it's probably more frightening than most "X Days of Horror" movies featured in other websites. Sometimes you don't need anything other than feeling for your characters to make a project truly scary. Muschietti got the chance in 2013 to adapt the short into a feature film, Mama, but the end result was just not the same. Some stories benefit from brevity, and this is one of them.

The sense of urgency is the real key here. We can only imagine what kind of monster might "mamá" be if it makes our big sister panic as much as she does. As it's classic in the genre, we can imagine "mamá" is not a mother per se, but an actual scary-ass creature, but it might as well be an actual abusive human mom who's just back from a bender, and when mom is drunk and angry, she starts beating her kids up and therefore no one wants to be around her when she comes home. It could be one of those stories. Alas, it's thankfully not.

And, of course, the threat is exacerbated by Muschietti's direction, as he immediately places us in the big sister's place. We see the house's long hallways, the creaky old doors, the creepy sounds that could be as natural as could also be part of the threat. She knows something is coming, you know something is coming. The little sister doesn't seem to fear it, so why should the big sister do? Why should you? Maybe it's nothing.

But it is. "Mamá" wants her girls. Give "mamá" some love, will you? But you, the viewer, know it's wrong, albeit you don't know what's wrong exactly until she makes her appearance. Until then, you don't know if "mamá" is a real person that poses a threat, a big Saint Bernard that slobbers all over you, or a ghastly looking lanky creature from hell. The atmosphere certainly points you to the latter, but the dread ramping up doesn't really discriminate.

If you've seen the 2013 film, you may remember the creature's updated look, but it's kind of similar. And it's a bit of a letdown after what preceded it (even though the short definitely doesn't end after "mamá" shows up), but at least it's not a stupid looking doodle like the creature at the end of the Lights Out short and, therefore, it never stops being scary.

Tomorrow: Roar with Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi's Shin Godzilla.