Horror fans who want a good scare may be disappointed, but fans of Olga Kurylenko should not miss the chance to see her in one of her few and far between lead roles.
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In ‘Mara’, director Clive Tonge’s debut feature, French model-actress and former Bond Girl, Olga Kurylenko, plays Kate, a forensic psychologist who has been called by the police to offer her assessment and diagnosis of Helena, a middle-class housewife who has been suspected of murdering her husband whose body has been found horribly contorted. A hysterical Helena claims that Mara, an ancient demon who haunts and kills people under sleep paralysis, is behind it.
As Kate investigates further, she discovers a support group for sleep-paralysis sufferers, which Helena used to be part of. One of the members is former soldier Dougie (Craig Conway), who provides much of the backstory for who Mara is and how she kills her victims. Apparently, it’s done in four stages, and Dougie is in the third stage, so he tries to prevent himself for sleeping by blasting loud music and setting a loud-ringing alarm clock. An accidental electric trip cuts off his alarm and he ends up being killed by Mara. Around this time, Kate starts to suffer from sleep paralysis and begins to be haunted by Mara. Despite this, she still does not completely believe in Mara’s existence until she witness Dougie’s death.
‘Mara’ is Kurylenko’s first lead role in a horror film, and she acquits herself generally well, although in some of the more emotionally demanding dramatic scenes, she struggles to convince. At times, Mara herself too struggles to convince us of its terror. She is most scary at the early part of the film, when we can barely see her, only her shadowy figure. But as the film progresses, we are shown more and more of Mara, and due to the low-budget prosthetics and makeup, Mara doesn’t appear that scary anymore.
‘Mara’ has been compared to Wes Craven’s ‘Nightmare on Elm Street’, but without the nightmares and without the frights. The frights from Mara come almost entirely from jump scares, and after the first couple of them, one can virtually predict where the next jump scare will come from.
Horror fans who want a good scare may be disappointed, but fans of Olga Kurylenko should not miss the chance to see her in one of her few and far between lead roles.
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