Use of lighting in 'Mama'

Within the film Mama, lighting is used in various different ways, I am going to talk about the lighting in the last scene of the film and how it is used to tell the story (87:16 – 95:27).

During the end scene a lot of cold colours of blue lights were used to give the audience a cold, dark, sombre feeling. The use of the blue light might also be used for a more natural moonlighting.

Low-key lighting is often used in horror films and in the film Mama the low-key lighting is used to create a mysterious environment; this causes a lot of shadows in the sequence. The darkness also makes people more vulnerable and threatened, as they are afraid of the unknown and places where they cannot see.

Andy Muschietti slowly brought the creepy character ‘Mama’ into the film and did not show what the character actually looked like until the very end. This creates suspense and tension towards the viewers and builds enigmas, which leaves the audience watching. In the end scene when they introduced Mama properly, keeping the detail and the highlights of Mama’s facial features and skin tone right till the very end. As the audiences have not seen a proper close up of Mama it adds visual interest and mood throughout the scene.

The three main types of angle lighting that are used in the film are back lighting, under-lighting and side lighting. All three of these angles of lighting techniques are used to add to the mysteriousness in the film, each angle with a different effect to the visual. Back lighting creates a silhouette to the characters and gives it a creepy effect with the many shadows on Mama’s face; under-lighting is used to disfigure the faces, this is used in many horror films and the third type is side lighting and this produces a shadow across the character’s faces and on the set creating mysteriousness.