Golden Globe winning actress Sandra Oh can do no wrong. This is not just my opinion. It is indeed a fact. (Okay, maybe that’s a bit of an exaggeration.) She’s currently killing it in Killing Eve’s final season. But now the prolific thespian is taking a walk on the horror side with Umma. The film’s title is the Korean word for mother and, based on the Umma’s trailer, this isn’t a story with warm and fuzzy feelings.
In the clip, Sandra Oh’s Amanda lives on a quiet farm in America with her daughter (Fivel Stewart) where they raise bees and jar honey. They are essentially off the grid, purposely eschewing phones, electricity, and all the trappings of modern life. It kinda sounds like the dream to me. But there’s a sense that Amanda is isolating her daughter for some reason… and that’s exactly what is going on. Things get complicated when Amanda discovers that her mother died recently.
She receives her mom’s ashes and begins to act differently towards her daughter, often responding to her with anger. After her daughter finds a photo, Amanda eventually reveals that the woman in the photo is her umma. She also tells her that many Koreans believe that life’s hardships come from the tormented spirits of ancestors. And, this has something to do with why she separated herself from her mom and never allowed her around her daughter. Like Amanda’s relationship with her umma, things become fractured between her and her child by the end of the trailer. She’s becoming her mother, which is as scary as it gets for a lot of people.
There are so many questions waiting to reveal themselves. What happened between Amanda and her mother? Why is she averse to electricity and phones? Are there other secrets being kept from her daughter? Those questions will get answers when Umma hits theaters on March 18.