How to Watch Umma Online

Umma tells the story of Amanda (Sandra Oh) and her daughter Chrissy, who live on a remote farm in rural America. They don’t have electricity or technology, and they spend their days raising bees.

But when a relative visits from Korea to give Amanda the cremated ashes of her mother, she starts having strange experiences and soon realizes that there is a spirit haunting her. She fears that she could start turning into her own mother if she isn’t careful.

Plot

Umma, or “mother” in Korean, follows a woman and her daughter as they lead a quiet life on an isolated farm. However, when the ashes of Amanda’s mother arrive from Korea, she begins to haunt her.

The story centers around Soo-Hyun (Sandra Oh), a Korean woman who lives in the United States with her daughter Chris (Fivel Stewart). They live on an isolated farm and are surrounded by a lot of nature, but they don’t have any friends or electricity. Despite this, Soo-Hyun suffers from serious PTSD due to the abuse that her mother had put her through.

While she is a good mother, she still can’t help but resent her own mother for leaving them behind. She and Chris also share a common fear of becoming their own mothers, a fear that they try to fight through every day.

This leads to a lot of conflict between the three women, and it is only once they heal their relationship that they can reconnect. Luckily, they are able to overcome their demons and find peace.

Throughout the movie, we learn about the way Koreans treat their ancestors’ remains after their deaths. They believe that their deceased ancestors’ spirits linger in the world, and some people make offerings to them so they can rest in peace.

In the film, we see Umma’s ashes being carried by a man who accuses Amanda of abandoning her mother. After the man leaves, Amanda becomes haunted by her mother’s spirit.

Once she gets the chance to confront her past trauma, she realizes that she left her family in the past, putting her daughter’s happiness over her own. She also realizes that she should have allied herself with her heritage, instead of running away from it.

As a result, Amanda and Chris are able to escape Umma’s grip and find resolution. Once they achieve this, the film concludes with a traditional Korean ritual, where Amanda and Chris both wear hanboks and bow in prayer.

If you’re looking for a horror film that tells a compelling story about cultural identity, you should check out Umma. It’s not quite as well-made as the likes of Minari, but it does offer a few insightful moments about how Koreans treat their ancestors and how that can be linked to a gumiho, a spirit that can grow malignant when its energy is stored too long.

Cast

Umma, which is Korean for "mother," stars Sandra Oh as a Korean immigrant and honey bee farmer living off the grid in an American farm. She and her teenage daughter Chrissy (Fivel Stewart) lead an idyllic life. They harvest honey from a small, remote farm and sell it to local shop owners to make money.

Amanda and Chrissy are as tight as a mother and daughter could be, reading together, working on the farm together, humming together. But when Amanda's ailing mother's ashes arrive in a box, she is forced to confront the lingering memories of her abusive past.

Oh is a wonderful actress, always able to take her role seriously and bring an organic sense of fear and anxiety to her character. She and Stewart have great mother-daughter chemistry on screen, and she does a solid job of making Amanda uncomfortably vulnerable in scenes when her PTSD starts to show through.

The movie also has some genuinely scary moments, especially the one in which Amanda wakes up during a lightning storm. The imagery here is both authentic and creepy, and the film's depictions of Korean culture are genuine enough to give the horrors a bit of weight.

It's also a film with a lot of themes, including the unhealthy bond between a parent and child, the burdens that come with parenting, and how emigrating to a foreign country can isolate a family. It's all presented in a very cinematic way, with some memorable representations of Korean culture and rituals.

While the movie gets a little pedestrian and makes some rookie mistakes, there's still plenty to love about it. This is the feature directing debut of Iris K. Shim, and she brings her own touch of eerie chills to the proceedings, but even so, the resulting film is far from a masterpiece.

There's a lot of heart and soul here, but it isn't enough to save this B-movie from being just another one of those forgettable intergenerational horrors. It's not a bad film by any stretch, but it fails to find the spark that could have made it a better story. That's a shame, given that Oh and the cast deliver some strong performances, and there are some really good scares in Umma's early sections.

Trailer

Sony Pictures has a new horror movie coming out, umma, starring Sandra Oh. It is a Sam Raimi-produced feature and will be releasing in theaters on March 18th, 2022.

The trailer for umma focuses on the film's main characters, Amanda (Sandra Oh) and her teenage daughter Chrissy (Fivel Stewart). They live a quiet life on their rural farm, enjoying the simple pleasures of harvesting honey and spending time with each other. However, a recent traumatic event shakes up their lives.

When her mother's ashes are brought to their home, Amanda becomes haunted by the fear that she will turn into her mother and become an evil force. As she tries to make sense of the experience, her mother's gwisin, a spirit that can cause trouble in the form of a ghost, appears to her and begins to torment Amanda and her daughter.

In her attempt to understand the underlying issues behind her aversion, she tries to learn more about the traditions surrounding the gwisin. She is told that she will have to bury her mother properly or she will become a gwisin and torment her family.

While there are some interesting themes that are explored, it's a shame the movie doesn't take more of an opportunity to explore them. In fact, despite the strong acting from Sandra Oh and her screen partner Fivel Stewart, the film never feels as interesting or compelling as it could have been.

The story itself is also quite simplistic and it loses steam a little too early on. There are some nice character moments and a few scares that do pop up, but they don't come in too many doses.

It's hard to feel a lot of emotion for the characters here and that's a major weakness because this is a genre that thrives on the emotional impact of scary moments. It's a shame that Umma doesn't take more of an effort to create more tension, because it's just another forgettable intergenerational horror.

Umma isn't a great movie by any means, but it does serve as a reminder that a strong relationship with your parents can be scary, no matter how good they are. It's also a reminder that when things get bad, sometimes you need to step back and think about the things that have happened in your life that have shaped you.

Release date

Umma is a horror movie starring Sandra Oh that explores the relationship between a Korean American mother and her daughter. The film is the directorial debut of Iris K. Shim and is slated for release on March 18th in the United States.

The film centers on a single mom and her daughter who live on a remote farm. When the woman receives the ashes of her late mother, she becomes haunted and begins to act out in strange ways.

What starts out as a story of cultural identity and heritage quickly becomes an examination of generational trauma. It’s a powerful subject that Shim eloquently touches on, yet she struggles to marry it with the genre and instead offers confusing scene transitions and an 83-minute run time that often feels like it could have been swapped out for a Hallmark family drama.

At its core, Umma is a haunted house film with some great ideas, but it never fully develops them to the point that they feel meaningful. It also has a lot of conventional horror cliches that make the most interesting themes feel underdeveloped, while the haunted house jump scares and the shrieking music cues do not add much to the tension or keep the viewer on edge.

There are some good early scares, including a child trapped in peril and a girl with a broken electrical cord experiencing painful shocks. But there aren’t enough to keep the film going.

While there’s some excellent performance work here from both the cast and Sandra Oh, it does not help the film to overcome its issues. It’s a shame that this film is being released so close to its release date, as I suspect that it will struggle to find a audience in an age where more traditional genre films aren’t performing well at the box office.

The story and characters are engaging and the ideas presented here will likely resonate with anyone who has suffered from a troubled relationship with their parents. While the script has its hiccups, it does offer some good performances and an effective message that a mother’s love doesn’t die. It’s a film that will make you think and, hopefully, leave you feeling inspired to make better decisions in your own life.