Meet Victoria and Lily, two girls taken away by their father (Game of Throne’s Nikolaj Coster-Waldau), after an economic crash sends his sanity to the loony bin (he’s just murdered his wife, we’re told).

The father, Jeffrey, is an emotional smashup, who, after an unexpected car-skid off a snow-swathed highway, finds the wretched hut in question and in one of those moment’s that has the audience going “don’t do it”, decides to kill his kids.

Unfortunately for him, the owner of the house, a gravity-defying ghoul of shapeless wisp, has a mother’s heart (with the film’s title being Mama, how could it not?!).

Now, five years (and a title sequence) later, the girls are rescued to the state’s psychiatric clinic, and their genuinely affected uncle also played by Mr. Coster-Waldau – is brought up to speed on their mental state.

Victoria (Megan Charpentier), still animalistic, recalls basic vocabulary. Lily (Isabelle Nélisse), the younger of the two, is more primal. Their time away from society has stunted their reflexes to growls and cagey attitudes.

Regardless, Lucas, who lives with his punk-rocker girlfriend (Jessica Chastain), wants to take the girls into his care. Their lack of child-raising experience, or security, is dusted under the rug, when the clinic’s doctor  (played by Daniel Kash) offers them a comfy house.

“On-the-house” (so to speak); they would be rent-free, as long as the doctor has full clearance to the girls (traumatic children are  God sent for psychiatrists, I suppose). And of course, like this needs clarification, the specter follows the girls here as well.

Mr. Muschietti, who also writes the screenplay with sister Barbera Muschietti and Neil Cross, fastens Mama with the routines of horror: scared, traumatized children, complete with a demon’s haunting lullaby— A big, roomy, horror-prone house with minimal furniture, supervising adults panicked by bump-in-the-night sounds who are liable to get smashed up by the unseen; a psychiatrist with a short life span.

These usual suspects of the supernatural, though clichéd to the bone, are keenly offset by Mr. Muschietti’s smart, at times soulful, filmmaking.

Mama – whose only let down is its television-like cinematography by Antonio Riestra – builds up ambiance by putting disturbed children in the front-seat, and then decorating the remaining scene with either sincere performances or wraithlike sightings (including a growing black puncture in the wall that signifies the touch of evil).

The film, by the way, expands on Mr. Muschietti 3 minute short film of the same title (a scene, which totals the complete length of the short film, is neatly tucked into the bigger films narrative).

Ms. Chastain, always fine in understated roles, has a delicate feminine reassurance to her Annabel; though by first appearance, with a horrid black-wig, tattooed arms and general goth-like slouch, one would think she is a contradiction to the film’s underlying maternal instinct (never mind that she could perhaps be an early casualty).

Mr. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s Lucas, an artist we’re told (and later shown), has a lesser significance in the film’s second and third act; on the other hand, his Jeffery excels the first five minutes of the movie.

The girls – especially Ms. Charpentier – have as much, if not better, scope to their characters (especially in the film’s climatic fifteen-minutes). Their progress is like Ms. Chastain’s Annabel: slow, familiar and human.

Mr. Muschietti has a flair for atmosphere, but subtlety is not his primary concern – nor should it be; at times Mama’s experience is as graceful as it is haunting – a horror movie centering on an undead mother’s insistent love couldn’t ask for anything more.

Starring: Jessica Chastain, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, Megan Charpentier, Isabelle Nélisse and Javier Botet.

Directed by Andy Muschietti, with a screenplay by Mr. Muschietti, Barbara Muschietti and Neil Cross (based on Mr. and Ms. Muschietti’s short film: Mamá). The director of photography is Antonio Riestra. With Editing by Michele Conroy and Music by Fernando Velázquez. The film is produced by J. Miles Dale and Ms. Muschietti.

Released by Universal Pictures and Footprint Entertainment, Mama is rated PG-13. Wispy wraith’s, hunched crawling children in the dark, some of it is genuinely frightening.