Mārama (2025 | New Zealand | 89 min | Taratoa Stappard)
Whether they’re trying or not, most horror movies reflect the times in which they’re made.
Not surprisingly, the increased prominence of a certain toxic orange monster—and the Pandora’s Box of ignorance, cruelty, and racism said monster threw wide open about a decade ago—has inspired a lot of genre cinema that gives voice to the frustrations and fears of the disenfranchised.
Mārama, a 2026 Seattle International Film Festival Jury Award winner starting its proper theatrical run today, taps into that zeitgeist brilliantly. It dresses some weighty themes in ornate period drag, only to tear that finery down with a ferocity that feels richly earned, masterfully suspenseful, and incredibly cathartic.
It’s 1859, and Mary (Ariāna Osbourne), an orphaned young Māori woman, travels from New Zealand to England after receiving a letter from one Thomas Boyd. The correspondence promises revelations about the parents she never knew, but upon arriving in the UK, Mary discovers that Boyd died several months previous. Marooned in England with little hope of returning to her homeland, she accepts a job from wealthy whaling magnate Sir Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens) as governess to his young granddaughter Anne (Evelyn Towersley).
Cole’s cultivated an obsession with Māori culture during his years whaling in the waters off New Zealand, filigreeing his estate with a massive collection of Māori artifacts and speaking the language fluently. Soon, it’s clear that his cultural appropriation skews to fetishization, that he’s likely hiding definitive (and potentially terrifying) answers to many of Mary’s most nagging questions.
The setup portends a classic gothic melodrama (Stephens describes Mārama in interviews, not inaccurately, as “Jane Eyre on a bad acid trip”), and writer/director Taratoa Stappard uses that trope-worthy framework as a jumping-off point. Things feel elegant yet uneasy at first; then Mary gradually unpeels the layers of awfulness underneath, and things get more visceral, ugly, and sledgehammer-shocking. Along the way, Mary’s beset by vivid dreams and visions that hint at a deeper spiritual connection than she’s initially aware of.
Stappard handles the buildup masterfully. The basic gist of the horror is divulged about halfway through, which makes Cole’s growing menace, the depth of the ethnic exploitation, and tattooed henchman Jack’s (Erroll Shand) loose-cannon monstrousness feel like horrific accidents in slow-motion.
By the time Mārama hits its final reel, things have hit a fever pitch, with the immaculately-appointed veneer of Cole’s massive estate giving way to blood, violence, and wholesale mayhem. It’s here that the movie well and truly kicks into horror high-gear, and the gusto with which it goes there can be understandably jarring (at least, that seems to be the one sticking point amidst the praise the movie’s received from critics). But Stappard’s script and direction sow the seeds of that descent into the nightmarish for much of the running time.
Mary’s dawning awareness and embrace of her own heritage—and her anger over the horrors wrought on her and her people by colonialist exploitation—evolve as her (possibly supernatural) visions increase in intensity. You can’t ask for a better focal point or avatar for this than Osbourne, whose performance modulates brilliantly as things get heavier: When circumstances turn her into an Avenging Angel in a sumptuous red ballgown, Mary’s as visually iconic as she is ass-kickingly magnetic. And if the movie wallows in righteous fury at the end, it does this while remaining true to Mary’s character and delivering some major catharsis for an audience.
Lest all of this sound like an over-intellectualized polemic, be assured that it doesn’t play that way. Taratoa Stappard takes on a lot of thorny issues in his debut feature film, but at its core, Mārama remains an incredibly well-engineered, gripping, and exhilarating piece of entertainment. Sometimes, a spoonful of sugar—or, in this case, a solid mix of succulent period detail, violence, shocks, and horror—really makes the medicine that is the message go down smoothly.
Mārama opens today at the SIFF Cinema Uptown, AMC Alderwood 16, and Tasveer Film Center.
Images courtesy Watermelon Pictures/Dark Sky Films