Children, you should honor your mother, lest she become a demonic spirit that haunts you after her death …
Amanda ran away from home years ago. She was pregnant, unmarried and, perhaps most importantly, she didn’t want her daughter to be subjected to the same abuse her “Umma” (the Korean word for “mother”) had inflicted upon her.
But now it seems that Chris, Amanda’s daughter, is taking after Amanda. She doesn’t want to live on a farm with no electricity anymore. She doesn’t want to be a beekeeper the rest of her life. She wants to go to college and make friends and live her own life.
It’s not all that different from what Amanda herself wanted once upon a time.
Except that Amanda has just been delivered the remains of her dearly departed Umma. And between the guilt she feels at abandoning Umma, the pain caused by Chris’s desire to leave and the belief that Umma’s spirit will remain with her until she lays the deceased woman’s remains to rest, Amanda finds herself becoming more and more like her mother.
In a way, Umma can serve as a cautionary tale to parents—that even though children should respect their parents, parents should also listen to their children.
Amanda realizes that Umma ultimately acted the way she did out of love for her daughter. Umma had a lot of pain in her life, and she wanted to protect Amanda from that same kind of pain. However, Umma never listened to or tried to understand Amanda’s desires. Rather, she emotionally manipulated Amanda for wanting to live a different life and tortured her into submission. Which resulted in Amanda leaving her mother (and everything to do with their Korean heritage) behind.
However, Amanda learns from Umma’s mistakes. She realizes that by not telling Chris the truth about her past, she has inadvertently repeated Umma’s actions. But ultimately, Amanda and Chris find ways to honor their Korean heritage (and thereby, Umma as well) without passing on the trauma caused by misguided actions.
River, the niece of a local store owner who sells honey from Amanda’s bee farm, is nice to Chris even though she’s “weird.” She says that weird people are often more interesting and dismisses the teens that mocked Chris behind her back.
Amanda tells Chris some Koreans believe that all of life’s hardships are caused by the tortured spirits of their ancestors. Amanda says she doesn’t believe in this superstition.
However, whether Amanda believes it or not, the spirit of Umma haunts both Amanda and Chris. They see Umma’s ghost (and a multi-tailed fox that represents her). Other strange phenomena include lights that flicker on and off, objects moving, disembodied hands grabbing Amanda and pulling her into a grave and bees swarming the house under Umma’s control. At one point, Amanda is even possessed by Umma.
It isn’t until Amanda and Chris lay Umma’s remains to rest in a ceremony called a “jesa” that the haunting finally stops.
Amanda had Chris out of wedlock. And when her uncle asks why she has no husband, she states she didn’t think she needed one.
We see flashes from Amanda’s childhood, when her mother would lock her in a closet, forcing her to be shocked by the broken wire of a lamp. While possessed by Umma, Amanda repeats this action, burning her hand badly. Umma’s spirit also strangles Amanda in anger, causing her to pass out.
In other moments of pseudo-possession, Amanda shoves what she believes is her mother only to discover that it’s Chris. She also slaps Chris across the face, who slaps her mom back, briefly snapping Amanda out of it.
A fox eats a hen. A baby chick gets stomped by a foot.
We hear singular uses of the f-word and s-word. There are misuses of God’s name, as well as “b–ch” and “d–n.”
Some adults drink beer, and Amanda notes she hasn’t had one since before she had Chris.
The abuse inflicted upon Amanda as a child results in electrophobia for her as an adult. However, she refuses to seek treatment for her fear, favoring bikes, candles and typewriters over modern appliances.
Chris handles her mother’s aversion quite well at first, preferring the holistic lifestyle and even requesting to be homeschooled. However, it’s revealed that Chris had trouble making friends in school because of her mom’s fears. Kids mocked Chris for living without electricity (and we see this still happening in the present). More troubling, when Umma possesses Amanda, she insults Chris, telling her that she will never be able to make friends (even if she goes off to college) because she’s a coward.
Eventually, Chris learns that her mother has lied to her about her electricity phobia. Amanda told Chris that electricity made her sick, instead of telling the truth that she was simply scared of it. At that point, Chris begins to rebel against her mother’s electrophobia. She secretly turns on their house’s transformer, breaks into a locked cellar and even runs away in the hope of hurting her mom’s feelings.
When Amanda’s uncle delivers her mother’s remains, he tries to make her feel guilty (as Umma once did) for “abandoning” Umma, claiming that Umma died because of her daughter’s abandonment.
Sadly, we learn that Umma had a hard time transitioning to life in America. And rather than supporting her through the change, Umma’s husband abandoned her and Amanda.
Umma is your typical horror flick with plenty of jump scares, a demonic undertone and an ending that sort of makes you wonder if the good guys actually won.
But it also had some messages I wasn’t expecting. Umma had a hard life and made a lot of sacrifices for her daughter. Those struggles by no means excuse her for the abuse she inflicted upon Amanda, but it does help Amanda to understand her mother.
Amanda has had a hard life and made a lot of sacrifices for her own daughter as well. But when she becomes possessed by Umma, she realizes how similarly she’s acted. She may not have locked Chris inside a closet like Umma did to her, but she did become a recluse, forcing her daughter to adhere to harsh rules because of her own fears.
But please, don’t get me wrong: This is hardly a feel-good, mother-daughter bonding movie. Far from it. Language, child abuse and demonic undertones obviously undermine whatever cautionary message someone might otherwise sift out of this PG-13 horror movie.
Emily studied film and writing when she was in college. And when she isn’t being way too competitive while playing board games, she enjoys food, sleep, and geeking out with her husband indulging in their “nerdoms,” which is the collective fan cultures of everything they love, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, Stargate and Lord of the Rings.
