The time has come to dive down the MA-bbit hole. This has the potential to be my most intriguing newsletter yet, and it will certainly be different from the rest. My passion for MA doesn't lie in a compelling, inspirational message it holds, like other films I've covered (Everything Everywhere All At Once, Meet The Robinsons, etc.) Instead, it's the TikTok users who go wild every time I post a photo reel of MA to a trending Taylor Swift song that keeps my love for her alive.
If you've found yourself here via TikTok, you already know about MA's virality. I started posting videos of MA in late 2020, and every time, the movie character garners more views than anything else. Eventually, I decided to make a separate account to appreciate the genius that is MA, and recently I rapidly gained over 300 followers because I applied a viral trend to the 2019 movie character. It's hard to explain MA's impact and why social media is so fascinated by her. It's safe to say MA is an enigma.
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MA premiered on May 31st, 2019, from the same production company that recently unveiled M3GAN for the world. While M3GAN saw massive success and Blumhouse Productions already has a sequel planned, MA is a little more niche, yet simultaneously, the character is a massive star.
MA follows a group of teenagers, including new girl Maggie, as they meet and befriend a woman named Sue Ellen, who insists they refer to her as MA. So what does MA have to offer a group of teenagers that would make them want to hang out with someone their parents' age? MA has a basement where she invites them to drink and party whenever they want.
This is part of MA's appeal. The storyline is so absurd that it lured fans in from the trailer, which included a clip of MA on Facetime infamously chanting, "Don't make me drink alone!" Another aspect that keeps fans so interested is the film's ability to combine horror and comedy. MA may not have received M3GAN's level of success, but the film is truly unforgettable for those who have seen it. Fans who really enjoy the film might even call it a MA-sterpiece
What makes MA so brilliant is that the titular character is played by Oscar-winning actress Octavia Spencer. This makes the film even more absurd because it doesn't seem like something the actress would sign up for. However, she signed up, and she ate it up. No one could have portrayed MA better than the Hidden Figures star.
She embodied the character so well that sometimes it's hard to decipher between Octavia and the movie character. She made MA believable, which is why, nearly four years after the film hit theaters, MA lives on, and fans find themselves longing for an answer as to where MA is now. Did she survive the house fire at the end of the film? Is she still partying in her basement?
“Welcome to MA’s!”-MA
MA does some disturbing things in the film, but every horrific action MA makes is followed by an absolutely hysterical moment. In one scene, MA hits a character named Mercedes with her red truck. Mercedes is out for a run, and when MA hits her, she falls to the ground, dead on impact.
MA takes off in a hit-and-run and doesn't look back. Instead, she turns on her radio which begins blasting Earth, Wind, and Fire's "September." Though some of the most memorable MA moments, and the ones fans recite over and over again on social media, were the scenes where MA harasses her teenage friends through videos and texts.
"It's five o'clock somewhere!" MA declares in one video, only to worry she might have done something to scare off her friends soon after. "Are you guys mad at me for something?" she wonders when she realizes the teens aren't responding to her messages like they used to.
It turns out MA wasn't a kind neighborhood woman who wanted to give teenagers a place to hang out and party without their parents finding out. MA was out for revenge, and she chose her victims wisely. It may have seemed like she stumbled upon the group of teens by accident or fate. However, the character is a MAstermind, and she had the whole thing planned from the beginning.
MA features several flashbacks to the character's childhood, which include instances of severe bullying. Unfortunately, MA was never able to move on from the trauma her high school bullies caused her, so she befriends their teenage children and plots against them. When their parents find out they've been drinking and partying in MA's basement, they warn her to stay away, but at the end of the film, MA seemingly tries to kill them all.
MA also develops a highly inappropriate crush on Andy, whose father, Ben, she also had a crush on in high school. While Andy and his friends make it out of MA's house alive, despite her trying to burn her whole house to the ground, Ben isn't so lucky. MA kills him in her house and lies with his dead body as her home burns to the ground. However, an alternate ending revealed that MA didn't actually die in the house fire. I don't know about everyone else, but I assume other MA fans would agree we could really use a MA sequel (a MAquel?)
Here's what I'm thinking. What if MA escaped the house fire, but everyone else thinks she died in the home? This way, MA could run away and restart her life somewhere else. If you're familiar with the show You on Netflix, you'll know this is what Joe Goldberg did in season 4, and it worked perfectly for him. MA definitely has more of her story to tell, she certainly has other bullies in life that she needs to get revenge on, and she, without a doubt, has other basements to party in. If anyone from Blumhouse Productions is reading this, let me be the one to tell you we need more MA!
Another terrifying aspect of the character is that she has Munchausen syndrome by proxy. Her daughter Genie is seemingly wheelchair-bound, but when Maggie and Haley sneak into the upstairs of MA's house, Genie walks into her room, and they're shocked that she can walk.
Genie makes it out of the house during the fire with everyone else and is distraught as she watches her home burn to the ground, knowing her mother is still inside. However, Genie was brave enough to break free from MA's trap, knowing that MA's behavior was abusive. Now that's a killer villain origin story. Genie has as much potential to carry out a MA sequel as MA herself does.
In my opinion, MA has become a stand-alone character, separate from the film itself. Like Pennywise The Dancing Clown or Micahel Myers. MA is like when an actor gets their start in one show or movie, but their career takes off, and soon their persona has outgrown that original role. No one recognizes Leonardo DiCaprio for his role in the final season of Growing Pains, but for the A-list star that he's become since then. That's how I see MA.
MA-Tok
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The first TikTok I posted of MA was movie stills edited to Taylor Swift's August. It had been a few months after folklore's release, and I posted the video without much thought, only to return later and see thousands of likes. This has happened every other time I've posted what I call a MA-Tok, proving just how influential the character has become. I love creating storylines with MA, like the one in which Andy was partying in a basement with a different girl, so MA made sure to win him back. It gives MA fans a continuation of the story even if filmmakers haven't given us one (yet!)
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Whenever there's a viral TikTok trend, I feel a calling to relate it to MA, knowing that others will find it as funny as I do. I'm not sure the filmmakers set out to create an iconic social media-famous character that would bring laughs and joy to so many people, but they've succeeded regardless. Laughter is a crucial part of life, and I enjoy making others laugh more than I enjoy most other things. The first MA-Tok I posted was in 2020 in peak pandemic times when people needed joy and laughter more than anything else. The fact that MA could bring that to so many holds so much power.
During the pandemic, people often said, "We're all in this together," even if it wasn't entirely true to everyone's unique circumstances. However, it was clear people were bonding over their mutual fears. There were also moments of joy and laughter that brought us together. As I mentioned before, MA combines both horror (fear) and comedy (joy), which I think is part of why everyone resonates with her so much, especially at the time that I posted my first MA-Tok.
MA-nti Hero
MA is both the underdog and the villain, and a lot of us see ourselves that way. I think that's how most people in society are because human beings are very complex, multi-faceted people. We all have good and evil inside of us, though hopefully, most of us aren't trying to kill our high school bullies' children in our basements. MA is a flawed character, but it's impossible not to have some level of compassion toward her because of her past. In the scenes when she breaks down crying over how horribly she was treated, it's easy to forget she's supposed to be the bad guy in the film.
If you've found me through TikTok because you're a loyal MA-Tok follower, I don't always talk about MA in this newsletter, but I do analyze other films, and maybe I'll even write about M3GAN sometime. So if you like movies, subscribe, and I promise I'll try to reference MA in another newsletter soon.
If you haven't seen MA, I promise you won't regret watching it. It's a wild ride from start to finish, so prepare yourself. With all the comedy and horror and evil MA-ments, try to find some compassion for MA and remember everything she stands for, bringing joy amidst the darkness!