YMMV / Ma

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Did Ma intend to torture and kill the kids immediately after meeting them, or did she only go off the deep end after they rejected her?
  • Early on, one of the guys jokes Chaz is gay, even though he's dating Haley. Haley has a lot of flirty moments towards Maggie and kisses her while drunk, but pointedly denies being a lesbian. Is it possible they're both gay and dating to hide it?
• Awesome Music: "Up in Flames," a sad, haunting and powerful orchestral score that plays at the end of the movie as Sue Ann lies down besides Ben's corpse to die alone in her burning house.
• Genius Bonus: Sue Ann's daughter being named Genie may be a reference to Genie, a feral child who was thought to be mentally handicapped by her father and kept isolated in a single room of her house until she was 13.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Many an audience member had stated that they only saw the film to see how Octavia Spencer's role as an insane woman played out.
• Moral Event Horizon: Ben and Mercedes cross it when it's revealed that, years ago, Ben tricked Sue Ann into performing a blowjob on a random person in the janitor's closet and then got the entire class to laugh at her when she came out, thus causing her spiral into insanity. There's not a lot of sympathy thrown their way when Sue Ann kills them both.
• Rooting for the Empire: Maybe tempered by the Genie twist, but even after that, Octavia Spencer acts so well that many hoped she would succeed in her plan to kill Maggie's friends' group.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Dr. Brown is supposed to come off as a Bad Boss, but she's quite justifiably frustrated that Ma is constantly on her phone (digging up info on the kids) rather than, y'know, doing her job.
• The Woobie:
  • Teenage Sue Ann. She was a lovely girl before falling victim to the other kids' cruel prank, which scarred her for life, especially when you consider the likelihood that she was only an outcast due to being the only black kid at an all-white school.
  • Andy. The movie never addresses this, but you can't help but feel bad for the poor boy considering Ma killed his father and stepmother, leaving him an orphan.

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