Analysis of interview of Guillermo del Toro about Mama

This is an interview of Guillermo del Toro the creator of the movie Mama talking about the movie. In the interview he starts of talking about how the initial 3 minute short movie of Mama does not lose the creepy and scary feel when produced into a long movie. This is a similar case to creating a trailer and yet ensuring that the movie is as scary and has the same quality of horror that the trailer does. By having a very good trailer and successfully attracting the audience to watch the movie that is then seen to be a disappointment will overall mean that you have been unsuccessful. Guillermo del Toro says that by creating an emotional and basically intriguing narrative even without the ghost will still be interesting to watch for the audience. Also he says that he has not included blood and gore in Mama as a lot of directors does in horror movies but instead gone for a more classic yet creepy scare. This is the type of horror we are planning on using as from our questionnaire we have found that audience do not want blood and gore may be due to it being over done. 

Guillermo del Toro also talks about the movie having strong female characters. He says that the strong female characters are struggling with emotions that the audience can relate to. It is most likely that the female audience will relate to these emotions rather than the male.  Mama has strong female protagonist such as Annabel who even though is perceived to be a strong character still has to struggle with something she was opposed to due to the man she loves.  This shows that even though she is a strong and confident character she still has to obey the male character and he has superiority to her.  The antagonist is also a female and is shown to be very powerful and scary in the trailer and poster.  Guillermo del Toro may have wanted to play with the boundaries and so that’s why he has made the antagonist a female. Our trailer also has a strong female antagonist like Mama and is a boundary opposition.  This may attract the female audience, as they would want to see the women character being more dominant and feared. It may also attract the male audience as they may find it entertaining to watch a female antagonist as they may want to see a women to play the villain and see how the movie uses technology, narrative, mise en scene etc. to make a female character to seem powerful and scary to a man. 

Guillermo del Toro ends the interview by saying that Mama is the type of movie that will scare you in an elegant way that 'will follow you home'. In our trailer the villain literally follows the victims and so the audience that watch our trailer may also feel like our villain is following them when they leave. This means that the after affects of our text and Guillermo del Toro's are similar may be due to both texts using similar boundary oppositions, similar ways of scaring the audience an narrative of the trailer.  

- Frouzon