In this episode we talk about Umma, a 2022 film directed by first time full length film director Iris K. Shim, Umma stars veteran actor Sandra Oh as Amanda and Fivel Stewart as her daughter Chris with appearances from MeeWha Alana Lee as Amanda’s mother or Umma. Content warning: we discuss difficult subjects including child abuse.
In this episode we talk about Umma, a 2022 film directed by first time full length film director Iris K. Shim, Umma stars veteran actor Sandra Oh as Amanda and Fivel Stewart as her daughter Chris with appearances from MeeWha Alana Lee as Amanda’s mother or Umma. Content warning: we discuss difficult subjects including child abuse.
The film is set in the lush desolation of a rural farm. I feel like I'm saying that word wrong. Rural rural.
Ethan:Do you remember in 30 Rock? There's a there's a show or no, there's a movie that Jenna does called Rural Juror. And there's a lot of gags around like saying rural juror. It's hard to say. Yeah, rural juror.
Sage:Hello, and welcome to Episode Eight of the teen horror podcast where we watch and discuss horror movies from a teens perspective. I'm your host sage and I'm joined by my co host and unpaid intern, my dad, hi everybody, Ethan here. This week, we watched the 2022 film Umma.
Ethan:As always, we're going to spoil this film and you'll probably want to watch it before we do. We'll be here when you're done. In terms of content please also note that this movie touches on sensitive subjects including child abuse. Directed by first time full length film director Iris K. Shim Umma stars veteran actor Sandra Oh as Amanda and Fivel Stewart as her daughter Chris with appearances from MeeWha Alana Lee as Amanda's mother or Umma.
Sage:The film is set in the lush desolation of a rural farm. Trees and bees rustle and buzz like a shroud surrounding an isolated farmhouse guarded by a sign prohibiting electronics"past this point." Amanda and her daughter Chris live a life of intentional seclusion, devoid of outside contact and technology. Together they raise bees and harvest honey to deliver to their only visitor and only friend: Danny.
Movie audio - Danny:Here's your fluffy little friends.
Movie audio - Amanda:See here our last quarters statements.
Movie audio - Danny:What do you see this quarter? Remember, I've been trying to sell your honey online that I can sell every drop of this you make and more.
Sage:Played by Dermot Mulroney. Danny is a shopkeeper from a nearby town who sells their honey for them.
Ethan:While Chris and Amanda seem happy in their unusual and electricity free life, this calm is up-ended when Amanda's uncle arrives from Korea to give her the ashes of her mother, her Umma in Korean.
Movie audio - Amanda:Stop, stop, don't come any closer! Shut the car off! Turn it off! Who are you?
Movie audio - Mr. Kang:(in Korean) Soo-Hyun.(in Korean) Don't you recognize your uncle?
Movie audio - Amanda:(in Korean) Uncle?
Movie audio - Mr. Kang:(in Korean) I flew halfway across the world to come see you. Aren't you going to offer me a cup of coffee?
Ethan:the uncle departs with a warning that if she fails to put her mother's spirit to rest, there will be trouble.
Sage:Strange and ghostly events begin to break apart the placid life of the mother and daughter.
Movie audio - Chris:Mom
Movie audio - Amanda:She's here,
Movie audio - Chris:What?
Movie audio - Amanda:She's the one who did this to your application
Movie audio - Chris:Who?
Movie audio - Amanda:She thinks you're running away from us.
Sage:Chris's desire to break free from the confines of her life at the farm intensifies and both she and her mother seemed to be under the shadow of Umma haunting them. And, as the film reaches its peak, possessing them.
Ethan:Amanda seems to be taken over by the spirit of her mother and Chris's life seems to be at risk at the hands of her own Umma, Amanda herself. In a final confrontation with her past. Amanda forgives her mother and by accepting the past also puts it to rest.
Sage:Okay, so overall impressions. First, I think just general ideas about the movie. Personally, I really like the themes that this movie explores, like immigration being the daughter to an immigrant generation, something you can connect with. Yeah. And Asian culture, things like that. Yeah, I really liked that part because it was something that I could identify with. We actually watched Umma right before going on a big trip to Southeast Asia, all over it, but specifically to Penang because that's where my family on my mother's side lives. And we saw a lot of our family that we hadn't seen in a while and we also went to some ceremonies for my grandmother, who passed a little while ago. And I think that was really important. Because connecting with your culture, when you are not even in the continent that the culture is from can be hard. And going back there, and seeing your family, and being able to do those things with them is really important. And I'm very grateful to have had that experience because I know that not everyone is able to do that. So I also think that was really important for the film because it does touch on things like, you know, Chrissy doesn't really know anything about her Korean culture, because her mother Amanda kind of locked all that away, and, you know, doesn't show her anything about it like her hanbok or even pictures of her grandmother.
Movie audio - Amanda:What do you want to know
Movie audio - Chris:Was this hers?
Movie audio - Amanda:It's called a hanbok. She made it herself. She's very proud of her work. She hoped to pass it down to me.
Ethan:Yeah, it was a very interesting parallel, because we actually, you know, we picked this movie, I don't, there was no conscious intention to pick it. And we you know, your grandmother passed away, it was the ceremonies that we that you attended in Penang, were the 100 Day ceremonies. And, you know, this is to honor her spirit and to give her offerings and which is something that we also see happening in the film.
Sage:Yeah, right. Yeah. At the end of the film, um, the way that they set Umma's spirit to rest is they have a ceremony that's intended to settle the spirit, you can let it rest.
Movie audio - Amanda:Time to pay our respects.
Movie audio - Chris:What is all this?
Movie audio - Amanda:This is a jesa. This is what we do to honor our ancestors, to be with them. So they're not alone in the afterlife,
Ethan:...and honor her. And they provide offerings to her.
Sage:Yes, offerings are a really big thing in Asian culture. And there's very specific ways to do it. Like the ceremony that I attended. Everything had to be in pairs of sixes, six types of fruit, six bowls, you know, things like that. You know, that's just the way it's done for the 100 Day ceremony. Do you, do you have any overall impressions?
Ethan:Yeah, sure. My overall impressions for this movie. I liked it. I enjoyed it. I'm a huge Sandro Oh fan. I have been since I saw her the first film I ever saw her and was a movie called last night, which I should introduce you to at some point, but it's she's just such a stunning actor. I just never tire of watching her performances. Fivel Stewart was great in this. Yeah, well, yeah. I'd never seen her and anything before Dermot Mulroney. But I thought, you know, it's a small cast. Yeah, very small. I don't you know, sometimes I look at these movies that are coming out now. And I don't know if they're small because they were filmed during COVID Yeah, I certainly can see that being the case, you know, like, there's, they're isolated. Like, literally, the whole movie is to people. Yeah. You know, that didn't none of that bother me. I liked all of that. I liked the settings, I thought that the subject matter, like I, it's obviously very related to our family, in some ways, where the idea of trying to stay in touch with their culture or being cut off from it and what that means and what that means to different generations. The overall I kind of felt like the there were some loose ends in the movie that didn't get wrapped up nicely. You know, I didn't feel like there any plot holes, but I just felt like some things got kind of like jumped past or skipped over a little bit. Maybe it's just hard to tell that story in an hour and a half.
Sage:So actually, this is kind of moving on to the what would I change section, but after watching the movie, I was reading some reviews of it. Yeah. And there were some things that people said that really made sense to me. For example, one person said something about how it is really hard to explore all of the themes that the movie talked about in just one movie, right like they talked about Asian culture, childhood trauma, immigrants, heritage, you know, things like that. Isolation you know, a lot of things and it it could have been kind of hard to explore all of those in a movie and I also saw someone say that this movie is the first draft to an excellent movie which I agree with I can see that because I really like all the things it talks about but there are there are just some parts in the movie that don't seem super tight. Yeah, things like that. Yeah, you can I know you had a specific
Ethan:yeah, there's there's like one theme that really like... it very early on in the movie we were introduced the the idea that she's allergic to electricity. Yeah, Amanda, the mom
Movie audio:(sounds of thunderstorm, Chris calling for her mom, mom wimpering)
Ethan:Okay, so so again, just to clarify this scenario, Sandra Oh, Amanda, and her daughter, Chris, who's played by Fivel Stewart, they live alone. They're surrounded by this, like, we're where are they in the country? It looks like Southern California to me. So yeah, something like, you know, it's like very arid, but they're growing. They're growing fruit trees, maybe around their orchard. Yeah, there's an orchard around there. And then there's, and then they raise bees. There's no electricity, you know, it's kerosene lanterns and whatever else they're doing for light, I guess. There's no electricity in the farmhouse. It's wired, but it's never used. And there's this sign. So you know, very first scene German. German character written Mulroney German is I'll just call him. Yeah. Mulroney. He, his character drives up Danny. Yeah, he's very conscientious. He stops at the sign that says no electronics past this point. No electricity. So obviously the car that includes the car, his truck, that's a nice thing, too, because it shows his respect for this woman. Yes. At that point, you know, you're like, Whoa, this is a big thing. You know, and it happens throughout the film, like there's moments where you're like, oh, this no electricity situation is odd, and, you know, has a huge impact on them. And it means like, they don't have phones, smartphones, they don't have computers, they're totally cut off. And that gets explored a little bit. Chris, you know, is trying to apply to college and things like this, right? Just use like a typewriter and right, and Danny is trying to help them sell their honey as well. And he's like, it's really big on the internet. And they're like, oh, what? Yeah, I mean, practically, right. Yeah. Just like, Oh, okay. You know, we and we find out why it is. It's because she was abused by her Umma with like a lamp cord. She was like, shocked, right? And so she's like, afraid of electricity. But there's a bunch of stuff that just didn't come together around that whole theme for me. At one point, we see her throwing, turning off the electricity, you know, like, in a flashback. And Amanda is already an adult when she does that. And I wasn't quite sure. Like, how is it like if she was so afraid of electricity? I mean, she wait till she was an
Sage:She felt that either I think maybe they mentioned this, or maybe I just interpreted it that way. But I think it might have been when she had Chris,
Movie audio - Chris:You're delusional. You're just hiding something. It doesn't really hurt you does it? The electricity? What? Your sickness. It's not real. Yes, it is just because you can't see.
Ethan:Yeah, right. Like, okay, now I have a daughter. So I'm, I'm gonna turn off the scary things
Sage:Well I don't know. I think she was also scared of like becoming Umma.
Ethan:Okay. And that's the key, I think, right? Like, I know, so I just felt like it wasn't like, really well wrapped up or it wasn't as tight as it could have been. I mean, it still works. So like, you know, I still get where they're coming from with that, which is the idea of like family trauma being passed down generation to generation and your desire, your fear of turning into your mama, your fear of turning into your parents. Believe me, this is like, a fear that everybody has, I think, especially when you have children, you're like, the things that my parents did, right? I want to reproduce and the things that maybe I wanted to avoid, like I like to, you know, I'm always scared. Like, I shouldn't say scared, but you know, you don't want to become the worst parts of your past. And those those things may not be from your parents and maybe from your grandparents, your great grandparents, you know, those things travel like a echo through a family.
Sage:Yeah. And a part where that theme comes in is there's a time kind of later in the movie where, um, a spirit kind of goes into Amanda and Amanda is just a vessel for her Amma and she finds Chrissy and Amma has laid out all of these Korean possessions that came with her ashes. And she has kind of an honoring like a ceremony set out or maybe for herself, but she's showing Chrissy and Chrissy is like, what is all this stuff? Right? She doesn't know much about her Korean culture. But then a mom kind of starts talking about the things that she had done to Amanda but it's Amanda saying it right. So it's kind of like she has become
Movie audio - Amanda:(possessed by Umma) She was scared too. Because she couldn't see how much it hurt me. Every time she ran away. I needed her To Believe me, she needed to understand my pain was real. We had an old lamp broken wire so I made her hold it until my pain became hers. And we could feel it together.
Ethan:Yeah, that's the other thing too is, you know, it starts off first of all I'm a is not present at all in the house. Yeah, no pictures. There's no obviously there's no like shrine. Yeah, there's no no memory of her. She's kind of been eliminated from the house. And so we haven't talked about this, but Amanda actually lies to Chris about her grandparents. Yeah. Right. She makes up like, does she make up being adopted or something?
Sage:I'm not sure. But I think she said that they were both dead
Ethan:And has some names for them that are like not really like they're just like fictional,
Sage:yeah, like definitely not Korean.
Movie audio - Amanda:Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Bill aren't my real parents. I made them up. I was raised by my mother. My real mother.
Ethan:And in fact, I don't think we know anything about do we know about him and his dad? Really? He's not he doesn't really figure into the story too much.
Sage:No, just that he we don't know anything about Chris's dad. Yeah, I don't think they I don't know if they mentioned him at all, but I don't mention him. Amanda's Amanda's father. They do mention in the end.
Ethan:Okay, let's let's jump back for a moment. Start off the movie. Alma doesn't exist. Basically. She has been wiped from memory. And when we first learned about Amma, it's when the uncle comes. I should probably hold on to this nugget for later on when we talk about favorite scenes, but I just want to say that the scene with the uncle I really like he's a really powerful actor. I don't know who he is. I don't know what he's saying. Practically. Speaking Korean,
Unknown:(Uncle speaking in Korean with Amanda) Her anger will grow as long as she remains in this box. That's why you must...
Movie audio - Amanda:Get out of my house.
Unknown:(in Korean) Each day, her pain will turn to poison, and seep into you. Your mother always gets what she wants.
Ethan:He's really intense. Yeah. And it's a surprising scene because he's bringing her mother's ashes to her all the way from Korea. Yeah, he is pissed off. He's like, so angry
Sage:Yeah, like, I felt that anger. And so basically what he with her. was saying is, how do you think your mama felt that you left
Ethan:It kind of catches the viewer off guard a little bit, I her? Because every day... he says something like, every day she would call for you? Or like when she died? She was calling your name. But you weren't there, were you? And you know, you can kind of see where he's coming from, even though like there's two. There's two sides. I think like, yeah, she was, you know, she was an abusive mother and Amanda left and started her own life. In Asian culture. Being there for your parents, and respecting your parents is a huge thing. Like one of Confucius's core teachings was like, do what your parents tell you, basically. And that's really important in Asian culture. And he was... he seemed really upset that she had left think, because you're expecting it to be kind of this tender reunion moment, but anything, but you know, yeah. And he doesn't even stick around very long. He's like, here's the stuff, you know, like a ceramic urn full of ashes, and like a bunch of personal effects.
Sage:Yeah. And a mask, as well, specifically.
Ethan:That's right. It also sort of has this symbolic role in the movie where Sandra was character, Amanda, kind of does she put it on at one point, I think, um, or does it sort of like, come on to her face or something?
Sage:It's a tal. It's called a tal. Um, how do you spell that? T A L tal. Yep. And so she's explaining to Chrissy. So once Chrissy kind of goes venturing down into this basement cellar that Amanda has used to store everything that she wants to keep secret, kind of like she has all of the electrical appliances, that picture of Amma her hanbok. And for people who don't know, hanbok is like a traditional Korean dress almost. Yeah, it's kind of like that. And she has all that stuff down there. And at one point, Chris, he goes down there and looks around and she finds a picture of Obama as well as the suitcase, I think.
Movie audio - Chris:What's this?
Movie audio - Amanda:That's a tal. It's a family heirloom. It's been worn by the women in our family for generations.
Movie audio - Chris:Why is all this stuff in here?
Movie audio - Amanda:She always said she take her favorite things with her into the afterlife. She probably left them for her ceremony.
Movie audio - Chris:What kind of ceremony?
Movie audio - Amanda:Well, some Koreans believe that life's hardships are caused by the tormented spirits of their ancestors, so they make offerings to appease or tortured souls.
Movie audio - Chris:Is that what you believe?
Movie audio - Amanda:I don't believe in superstition.
Sage:Amanda is showing Chrissy the suitcase and a picture of Umma and the urn and things like that. And then Chris, he's like, What is this mask and Amanda explains that it's a tal and it has been passed down from the woman in the family for generations. And once that kind of happens, these creepy encounters start to occur. One of them specifically is when Amanda is outside at night because I think she heard Chrissy yelling for help. And she goes outside at night, and she basically encounters Umma. It's this figure, with the tal on the mask and with the hanbok on because it's kind of like a menacing figure and there's more encounters with that menacing figure. Chrissy I think tries on the hanbok in the attic at one point and Amanda goes up there to try to find Chrissy and she encounters Umma
Movie audio - Amanda:Chrissy? Why are you wearing that?
Movie audio - Chris:Sorry, Mommy, I was just trying it on. I found it up here.
Movie audio - Amanda:Take it off.
Movie audio - Chris:Why.
Sage:But then it turns out that it was kind of maybe just like a vision she was seeing or a someone is messing with her head. And it was actually Chrissy the whole time just in the hanbok. So you know, things like that start to happen. And it's interesting, because she's always wearing a hanbok Yeah, and the tal, like the the traditional Korean things. And it's kind of framed as like a scary thing, you know?
Ethan:Yeah, it reminds me there's other stuff in that scene where Chris finds the possessions in the basement. There's something that has a painting of... and I'm going to say this wrong, probably. But the Kumiho. The nine tailed fox,
Sage:Yes, so on the suitcase there's a scarf
Ethan:A traditional kind of spirit or demon, I'm not sure exactly. What's interesting is when we see that we see Chris discovering that that imagery, and she doesn't really pay a lot of attention to it, but it's there. And I really was kind of expecting I was like, Oh, the I thought oh, okay, Umma is actually a Kumiho. Or, or we're going to see something more about this. And we do see the Kumiho at one point at night when there's just like wild stuff happening on the farm, but I feel like it doesn't get used very much.
Sage:It doesn't. You see the Kumiho, like, once, and then...
Ethan:I really thought that there was a lot of stuff being kind of telegraphed, like, oh, maybe there's a connection here. Or maybe there is something supernatural.
Sage:Yeah, that that part, I wish they had done more,
Ethan:You know, because ultimately, I don't lie. Okay, the movie presents Amma as sort of this entity that is possessing Amanda and Chris. Right. And, and there and it seems to be this like a shadowy malevolent force, sometimes that is very real in their lives. Yeah. But at the same time, it also is presented sort of as a purely metaphorical, you know, aspect of their family history being kind of suppressed. Right. And, and at the end of the movie, I don't really know like, was there a real possession happening? Or was that just sort of a metaphor for her experience of this family trauma this family? Actually, one thing I want to mention really quick is the idea of family ghosts. You know, I used to work with.. or families that are haunted. I used to work, right out of college, at a treatment facility for juveniles and... juveniles... for kids. We had therapists on staff there, and there's this one therapist who's a big bear of a guy, big beard, and very gruff, very nice guy. And he and I were talking about one of my primary case loads at one point, and you know, we're talking about the impact of family trauma and, you know, families where abuse is passed down generation to generation. And he said, you know, there really is such a thing as a family ghost. Families really can be haunted and it is it is trauma that haunts families. He says, but you kind of really almost experienced it as a haunting, you know, something so scary. And that always stuck with me. And this movie is kind of a perfect encapsulation, right? Like this drama. And later on we see that trauma is also experienced by Umma herself as she is abandoned in this country that she doesn't know when doesn't speak the language in, you know.
Sage:That actually... I really liked that scene at the end of the movie where, what happens is Amanda is kind of like, dragged into the dirt. So she buries... she buries Umma's ashes in a very non ceremonial or respectful way because she's kind of mad. And so then later Amma kind of appears on that spot where she her ashes have been buried and drags Amanda into the dirt. And then there's kind of a maybe a dream like, it's not... it's not dream like, the scene, but I interpret it as some sort of vision or dream, where Amanda is talking to her Umma, that's when you kind of realize that she's not just a bad person for no reason.
Movie audio:(Amanda confronting Umma, crying)
Sage:Where Amanda is kind of talking about how a mother emigrated to the US with her husband because she was expected to to be a good wife. And she you know, she didn't know English. She didn't know anyone. She knows the custom. And she was kind of left on her own.
Ethan:Yeah, she had her own goals in life. But this sort of derailed all that. And yeah, she had a hard time. In the movies defense. The one thing I really want to say that I liked in particular, is that at the end of the movie, it did not feel like they just forgive Obama, that it didn't feel like a pure like, okay, it's all light and sunshine now. You know, it felt like an acknowledgment of the trauma that Amanda experienced, and it felt like she did... I don't know if forgive is the right word. Right? Maybe she didn't forgive. But she accepted that Alma was right. Whereas at the beginning of the movie, Ahmad does not exist for her. Yeah, she has been erased. By the end of the film. They accept that Emma was and that Emma had her own experience and trauma and life. And I don't think it was a forgiveness of the the abuse that Amanda suffered. Yeah. But I felt like it was an acknowledgment of Obama just as a person. Yeah, exactly. It was Yeah. And and also, as a person that is in their family.
Sage:Yeah. And she, Amanda mentions that her father had left her and she was left with Umma and Umma would take out her anger and her rage at this kind of foreign place that she was in on Amanda. She was left to kind of bear that emotional burden, which I think is really... it's realistic. You know, that happens a lot when you know, people, especially parents, because their kids are just there, you know.
Ethan:Do you want to talk about your favorite scenes?
Sage:Yeah. So personally, my favorite scene... well definitely the dream confrontation was one of them. But also there's one that we didn't... We haven't talked about this at all. But Danny has, I think, a niece who is in town for a little while, right.
Movie audio - Danny:This is my niece, who will be staying with me a few weeks while our folks are out of town. River. This is Chris.
Movie audio - River:Hey
Movie audio - Chris:I like your makeup.
Movie audio - River:Thanks. I really like your freckles. Wish I had them.
Sage:Chrissy hangs out with her a few times. One of my favorite scenes is when Denise knees is hanging out with Chrissy after she's kind of run away from Amanda because her college application had been typed all over. Yeah. And Amanda denies that she's done it and it's kind of implied that Umma did it. Chrissy bikes off and goes into town and she runs into Danny's niece. In the back of Danny's truck. They have a little talk and Danny's niece gives Chrissy a planner, like a college planner. I don't know I just I really liked their dynamic because at first you kind of think that she's gonna make fun of Chrissy, like all the other kids in town do because you know that she's weird. She doesn't have a phone. She's isolated. But then you kind of you realize that she's not like that and that she really does care about Chrissy and she really wants her to do what she was trying to do, which is go to college. Yeah. And I don't know. I think that's really nice. Yeah,
Ethan:Yeah, she supports her doing that in her own way and she gets her a paper planner. Yeah, that was neat. All right. I think that pretty much wraps up our review of Umma.
Sage:Thanks again for joining us on this episode of the Teen Horror Cast. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at@teenhorrorcast where we'd love to hear from you. Let us know what films you'd like to hear us review. See you next episode!
Ethan:See you then! Bye
Sage:Bye
Ethan:Rural. You just say rural. Rural. Rural. Okay. Rural. but not It's not Earl. Earl Rural would be an awesome name, though. Earl Rural and his wife Pearl. Pearl Rural and Earl Rural. Do they have any kids? Merle.