Sandra Oh is SUPER busy. Coming off her SAG nomination for The Chair, she’s in the midst of the final season of Killing Eve, she has a Pixar movie, Turning Red, coming out this month, and also this month, she stars in the horror movie Umma. From writer/director Iris K. Shim, and produced by Sam Raimi, Umma dropped a trailer yesterday that is a big pile of NOPE. (But not “Nope”.) Isolated farm? Mysterious aversion to modern amenities? An estranged mother’s ashes? Something In The Basement? BEE SWARM? No thank you, I shan’t have any of it.
Creep factor aside, Umma looks pretty cool. There is a micro-trend of using folklore in horror currently—Midsommar, obviously, but also Lamb and the Irish horror-drama You Are Not My Mother—and Umma falls into that category, tapping into Korean mythology and folklore as the roots of its horror. I spy a gumiho in the trailer—a nine-tailed shape-shifting fox—and there is some kind of ancestor magic at play, possibly riled up because of the rift of Sandra Oh’s character and her dead mother. It looks super creepy, and I do NOT like all those bees—honey is delicious but anything that swarms is Not To Be Trusted—but I will totally end up watching this, if for no other reason than Sandra Oh. Threatening bees aside, observe Sandra Oh’s range. From hospital drama to crime thriller to comedy series to Pixar to horror, what ISN’T she doing?
Attached - Sandra at the premiere of Turning Red yesterday in LA.