See The Short That Led To 'Mama,' With An Introduction From Guillermo Del Toro

One of the first releases in the new year will be Mama, which comes from director Andres Muschietti and producer Guillermo del Toro. The feature stars Jessica Chastain as a woman who finds herself becoming foster mother to a pair of young girls who have spent years living in the woods after the murder of their parents. The film is based on Muschetti's career-making short, also called Mama, a three-minute piece that seems to be one single take. It's an excellent little piece of work.

We posted the original short back in 2009, but are able to present it again now. This time, the short comes with a bonus intro from Guillermo del Toro.

After checking out this short, you can revisit the trailers for the feature here and here. Germain spent some time on the set of the feature, and he's got a great set visit recap here.

Mama opens on Friday, January 18th. Here's the synopsis for the feature, but if you watch the short you'll get pretty much all the info you need.

Guillermo del Toro presents Mama, a supernatural thriller that tells the haunting tale of two little girls who disappeared into the woods the day that their parents were killed. When they are rescued years later and begin a new life, they find that someone or something still wants to come tuck them in at night. Five years ago, sisters Victoria and Lilly vanished from their suburban neighborhood without a trace. Since then, their Uncle Lucas (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and his girlfriend, Annabel (Jessica Chastain), have been madly searching for them. But when, incredibly, the kids are found alive in a decrepit cabin, the couple wonders if the girls are the only guests they have welcomed into their home.

As Annabel tries to introduce the children to a normal life, she grows convinced of an evil presence in their house. Are the sisters experiencing traumatic stress, or is a ghost coming to visit them? How did the broken girls survive those years all alone? As she answers these disturbing questions, the new mother will find that the whispers she hears at bedtime are coming from the lips of a deadly presence.