It’s a busy week for Blumhouse: In addition to releasing Happy Death Day 2U this weekend, the studio just dropped a trailer for a new thriller called Ma–and this thing looks like a barrel of bananas. The movie centers on a group of teens who encounter Octavia Spencer’s Ma and her phenomenal Dorothy Hamill bowl cut at a gas station, where they convince her to buy them some booze. She sees their offer, and raises them a very cool and totally normal invite to get wasted in her basement, which soon becomes the hot teen party spot in town. As clearly defined by the horror genre’s Law of Underage Drinking, these teens are not long for this world.
First things first: Ma was directed and co-written by Tate Taylor–the same Tate Taylor who introduced audiences to shit-pie in The Help. With that in mind, the trailer for Ma takes on an extra dimension of ridiculousness, and that’s before we even get to the part where Octavia tells a kid that he smells just like his daddy. Like a good Stefon nightclub, this trailer has a little of everything: Luke Evans playing “a local dad,” Octavia Spencer using FaceTime to taunt teenagers, and a Party Basement. It basically looks like the new Neil Jordan thriller Greta, but if Isabelle Huppert’s character was just a smidgen more ambitious.
Let’s take a look-see at the official synopsis for Ma:
Everybody’s welcome at Ma’s. But good luck getting home safe.
Oscar® winner Octavia Spencer stars as Sue Ann, a loner who keeps to herself in her quiet Ohio town. One day, she is asked by Maggie, a new teenager in town (Diana Silvers, Glass), to buy some booze for her and her friends, and Sue Ann sees the chance to make some unsuspecting, if younger, friends of her own.
She offers the kids the chance to avoid drinking and driving by hanging out in the basement of her home. But there are some house rules: One of the kids has to stay sober. Don’t curse. Never go upstairs. And call her “Ma.”
But as Ma’s hospitality starts to curdle into obsession, what began as a teenage dream turns into a terrorizing nightmare, and Ma’s place goes from the best place in town to the worst place on earth.
Ma also stars Juliette Lewis and Missi Pyle, and hits theaters on May 31.