Trailer for Sandra Oh's Upcoming Horror Flick UMMA
A new trailer and two new photos have been released from the horror movie Umma, starring Emmy-nominated actress Sandra Oh (Sideways, Grey’s Anatomy, Killing Eve). The story follows Oh’s character Amanda, who lives on a rural American farm with her daughter, played by Fivel Stewart (Atypical, Ted Bundy: American Boogeyman).
They live a peaceful life keeping bees, until Amanda’s estranged mother’s remains arrive from Korea, haunting her. The movie comes from Iris K. Shim, who wrote the script and directed the film in her feature directorial debut.
Shim talked about the film in a recent interview with CinemaBlend, saying:
“Umma is the Korean word for mother. It’s what I call my mom. There's obviously a lot of movies about mothers and motherhood, (but) for me, I just never got the experience of watching a movie that explored that theme in the way that I have always experienced it and viewed it. That specificity of seeing a character on screen, saying the same words that I use when I talk to my mom, That's the part that I really wanted to try to keep. I have to give Sony credit for keeping the title. … I think what's so fascinating about language is that the ‘ma’ sound is so common in the word for mother, and in so many different languages. It's so universal that even though it's the specific Korean word for mother, it still sounds universal when talking about motherhood.”
In the trailer and photo below, you’ll see masks that play a big part in the film’s story. When Shim was asked about the significance of the masks in Umma, she once again traced her writing back to her childhood, explaining:
“So that's called a Tal. And it's something that I would see in my house growing up. My parents would have this framed wall art with these tiny little wood replicas of those masks. And I had no idea what those were. I honestly, didn't ever really even ask my parents like, ‘Oh, what is this?’ To me, it was always sort of a decoration. … But then when I started thinking about Korean imagery that really connects me to a long-standing tradition that I just had no awareness of – and the more that I started researching – I started realizing like, ‘Oh, these masks have a very, very rich history.’ … That was a really fun process, of actually being able to learn more about my culture and traditions.”
This movie looks pretty dang scary! I am really picky about the horror movies I watch because I don’t love being scared, but I do like an interesting story that gets your heart pumping. Check out the trailer and photos from the film below, and watch Umma when it hits theatres on March 18th.
