Certificate: 15

Running Time: 112 mins

UK Distributor: A24

UK Release Date: 24 April 2026

WHO’S IN MOTHER MARY?

Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Hunter Schafer, Sian Clifford, FKA Twigs, Atheena Frizzell, Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, Isaura Barbé-Brown, Alba Baptista

WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?

David Lowery (director, writer, producer, editor), Toby Halbrooks, Jeanie Igoe, James M. Johnston, Jonas Katzenstein, Maximilian Leo and Jonathan Saubach (producers), Daniel Hart (composer), Andrew Droz Palermo and Rina Yang (cinematographers)

WHAT’S IT ABOUT?

A pop star (Hathaway) has an otherworldly reunion with her former costume designer (Coel)…

WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON MOTHER MARY?

David Lowery is one of the more interestingly undefinable filmmakers working today. One look at his filmography and you’ll find that there’s little consistency with his projects: he can go from creating vivid arthouse pictures like Ain’t Them Bodies Saints and A Ghost Story to being Disney’s go-to director for live-action remakes of Pete’s Dragon and Peter Pan & Wendy to making audience-friendly hits like The Green Knight and The Old Man & The Gun. It’s hard to pin him down as to who he may be as an artist, and if anyone thinks that his latest film Mother Mary would offer some clarity on the matter, then they’re in for some bad news.

More in line with A Ghost Story than, say, Pete’s Dragon or even The Old Man & The Gun, Lowery’s latest film as director, writer, producer and editor is an odd duck, one that features some of his more out-there ideas and concepts with an execution that (perhaps intentionally) lacks the cinematic scale of his earlier work. But even so, it is never boring, filled with enticing dialogue and hypnotic imagery that makes it fascinating to experience, so long as you don’t think about it too hard afterward.

The film stars Anne Hathaway as the hagiographically named Mother Mary, a world-renowned pop star who’s about to make a comeback performance after a freak onstage accident. But severe dissatisfaction with her current stage wardrobe compels her to visit the English manor hub of her former costume designer and estranged close friend Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel), to ask her for a new dress in time for her show in three days’ time. Sam, however, is none too thrilled about being back in the presence of her former friend, and as both artists seek to mend the gaping hole in their friendship so that the request can be fulfilled, they end up revealing a shared experience with an unlikely source: a ghostly being in the shape of red fabric which may still linger among them, hovering over their mutual trauma.

While it’s hardly the first time that fashion and horror have collided on screen – for example, Peter Strickland’s In Fabric also features a piece of cloth as the unlikely conduit for supernatural affairs, while Nicolas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon takes being devoured by the industry very literally – Mother Mary is a movie about fashion that doesn’t seem to think of itself as a horror. It frames itself as much more of a two-hander drama between Hathaway’s Mother Mary and Coel’s Sam, with all other supporting players like Hunter Schafer (as Sam’s assistant) and FKA Twigs (as an admirer of Mary’s that plays a vital role in the latter’s arc) coming in and out when necessary, with the majority of the film taking place inside Sam’s barn turned fashion workshop. Dialogue also plays a huge part in the storytelling, arguably more so than the visuals, with Lowery’s script filled with lengthy but engaging monologues (and sometimes duologues) that flat out explain characters’ relationships and past discrepancies, all featuring the vocabulary of someone who considers the Architect scene in The Matrix Reloaded to be a powerful work of prose.

From all of that, you’ll have probably noticed that Mother Mary gives the vibe of something you would watch on the stage instead of the screen, like a particularly abstract Samuel Beckett play that also happens to feature songs co-written by Charli XCX. But while it certainly feels more theatrical than cinematic, at least in its narrative execution, Lowery’s film utilises the contrasting storytelling methods to craft something that feels both of the stage and of the screen. Much of the plot centres on the two lead characters’ desire for artistic clarity, Mary in the sense that she’s looking for something more authentic than her heavily manufactured image and discography both seem to suggest, and Sam in that she desires appreciation and credit from someone who effectively stabbed her in the back after all they’ve done together.

Lowery combines their different yet similar goals into a highly allegorical ghost story – or, more accurately, a story that happens to have a ghost in it – where the spectral being requires a theatrical reckoning of their collective insecurities while resolving them in cinematic fashion. The dreamlike imagery of cinematographers Andrew Droz Palermo and Rina Yang accompanies Lowery’s heavily-wordy dialogue on a carefully choreographed journey of the soul, while Hathaway and Coel’s physically and emotionally demanding performances are powerful enough to serve as the viewers’ dual guides. It ends up creating some intriguing ideas of what supernatural horror can be, one that’s filled not with traditional jump-scares but highly stylised visual metaphors where characters expose themselves in more ways than one.

But this approach will undoubtedly not be to everyone’s tastes. It can all be very easily seen as pretentious faff, and in some cases it can definitely come across that way, especially in how certain characters seem to be a bit too in love with the sound of their own voice as they describe what may be going on within amidst their inflated sense of ego. However, if you’re able to go along with the flow that Lowery has created for yet another entry in his undefinable filmography, you’ll find Mother Mary to be a fascinating experience that embraces theatricality of varying definitions.

SO, TO SUM UP…

Mother Mary is an odd yet fascinating combination of two-hander drama and supernatural allegories, as filmmaker David Lowery embraces a stage-like theatricality with some stunningly cinematic imagery to craft a study of artistic clarity that won’t be for everyone but will mesmerise anyone willing to give it a chance.

Click here to find cinema showtimes for Mother Mary!

Or, click here/below to find where you can watch Mother Mary online now (if available), thanks to JustWatch!