Title: “Ma”

Release date: May 31, 2019

Starring: Octavia Spencer, Juliette Lewis, Diana Silvers, McKaley Miller, Corey Fogelmanis, Luke Evans, Missi Pyle, Dante Brown, Gianni Paolo, Tanyell Waivers, Dominic Burgess, Allison Janney

Directed by: Tate Taylor

Run time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Rated: R

What it’s about: A 40-something woman befriends a group of local high school students, but the situation soon takes a dark turn.

How I saw it: Let’s start with a couple of questions about “Ma”:

• What is an Academy Award-winning actress like Octavia Spencer doing in a mid-level teen psychological horror film?
• And since she apparently signed up for the starring role of her own free will, why couldn’t Spencer have been on screen during the entire film?

Spencer, who earned a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her role in “The Help” and has been nominated for the same honor twice since then, plays Sue Ann, aka Ma. Sue Ann seems to lead a lonely existence in a non-descript Ohio town. It’s the kind of place where locals rarely leave, and if they do, they find themselves returning. Everyone knows everyone else’s business. Sue Ann grew up in the town. She works for the local veterinarian (Allison Janney, who also seems to be playing below her level), who is verbally abusive to her. She doesn’t have any friends.

One day a group of local alcoholic high school students camps outside a liquor store hoping someone of age will buy them booze. Sue Ann happens by and, after some pleading from the new girl in town, Maggie (Diana Silvers), agrees to break the law for them. But something (and this is the case even if you didn’t see the trailer) is off about Sue Ann. She gets too friendly with the teens too quickly. Soon, she is inviting them to party in her basement, where they can drink (their only hobby) if they don’t take the Lord’s name in vain, have a sober driver and never go upstairs. Sue Ann also parties with them.

Perhaps because they are so elated to have a private place to party, or maybe because they are stereotypical horror movie dumb teens, the group of five doesn’t notice that Sue Ann has run off the rails. And, oddly, it does not phase them when, during one of their drinking sessions in the basement, Sue Ann pulls a gun on a teenage boy and makes him take off all his clothes. Maybe no one in a movie set in present-day Ohio has heard of #MeToo. When Sue Ann starts stalking the teens, do they tell anyone that could help? No.

As is the norm in these types of movies, Sue Ann’s behavior deteriorates. Turns out she was psychologically scarred by an incident 30-some years ago and has never forgotten. Conveniently, it turns out the parents of some of the teens partying in her basement were involved in her traumatization, and now Sue Ann has her opportunity for revenge – never mind that none of the teens was personally responsible for what happened to her before they were born.

Spencer is as outstanding as you would expect, and she clearly is having fun being in a starring role and playing a psychopath. Her acting seems effortless. It matters little that she is so charming that it is difficult to fully buy into her being a ruthless killer. She is the best aspect of “Ma,” and the movie drops down a couple of levels each time she is not on screen.

Part of the problem with “Ma,” directed by Tate Taylor (who also directed Spencer and Janney in “The Help”), is with pacing. It checks in at 1 hour, 40 minutes, and it didn’t seem that long, perhaps because the final act seems rushed. All the horror movie action seems to take place in the final 20 minutes. Few 100-minute movies would benefit from more time, but this one would have, unless the action could have been better spread throughout. The final act feels especially frantic compared to the first two-thirds of the film, which builds slowly, emphasizing the characters’ small-town existence in the first third, then (in the best part of the movie) letting Sue Ann’s psychosis simmer in the second act before exploding into violence.

“Ma” also has a couple of noticeable plot holes and a few too many conveniences — like Sue Ann’s easy access to animal tranquilizers, which she utilizes on humans; or how the people who rush to Sue Ann’s house in the climatic scene have little idea where she lives but somehow find a place that is described as being “in the boondocks.” A side story about Sue Ann having a daughter that she drugs but plays off as ill seems to exist just for an easy jump-scare. A brief reference to race and how it might have figured into Sue Ann’s traumatization is made in the climatic scene when she paints a black teen’s face white and says it’s because the group can have only one black friend; she apparently was the only black student back in her high school days.

Other inferences about race can be made from “Ma,” which is rare in that it features a black woman doing the killing. But it doesn’t seem as interested in such weighty matters — not in the way Jordan Peele’s clever “Get Out” was — as it does being a mid-level summertime teen horror movie. As great as Spencer is, she couldn’t turn it into something more special than that.

My score: 55 out of 100

Should you see it? This easily could wait until release on disc/streaming.