In Tate Taylor's "The Help," Octavia Spencer played a maid, Minny Jackson, who served her boss a pie with a decidedly unsavory filling. Spencer serves up worse than that as a psychotic predator in Taylor's latest, "Ma."
It's quite a pivot from "The Help," the Civil Rights Era drama that turned Spencer into an Oscar winner (for supporting actress) and boosted the career of her longtime friend Taylor. Even so, Spencer has never been the main star of her own film. "Ma" gives Spencer the spotlight she deserves, and allows Taylor ("The Girl on the Train") to make his first foray into the currently hot genre of horror.
The heroine of "Ma" is Maggie (Diana Silvers, "Booksmart"), a 16-year-old from San Diego who moves to a dead-end, Middle American town with her single mom (a hard-edged Juliette Lewis). Maggie falls in with rebellious Hayley (McKaley Miller) and her friends, whose main activity is drinking at the local rockpile; alcohol is obtained by loitering outside a liquor store hoping a grown-up will make a purchase for them. Enter Sue Ann (Spencer), a seemingly friendly woman in hospital scrubs.
