Reviews
[REVIEW] Fantastic Fest 2025: ‘Mārama’ Is a Lush Gothic Expression of Colonialism’s Scars
Take it from the pastiest British person you know: the history of Britain is not an exclusively white history. That feels important to reiterate right now at a time when right-wing idiots are painting St. George’s flags all over England and spewing nonsense about taking “their” country back. The nation so concerned with immigration today once plunged its greedy fingers into every pocket of the world, pilfering its riches, ransacking cultures, and dragging people from their homes. Some of those people found a new home—willingly or otherwise—in the British Isles, yet they are so often left out of our history as to become invisible. Set in Victorian England, Mārama, the debut feature of writer-director Taratoa Stappard, shines a bright spotlight on the colonial scars that Britain likes to pretend are long-since healed, if it acknowledges them at all, revealing that they’re very much still bleeding.
A Warm Smile Hides a Hungry Eye
Mārama opens with a shot of a woman with fresh cuts on her chin. Anyone possessing even a passing familiarity with Māori culture will likely recognize this for what it is—not the aftermath of an attack, but an act of defiance, a freshly chiseled moko kauae tattoo. We’re then introduced to our protagonist, the eponymous Mārama (Ariāna Osborne), a young Māori woman who was given the anglicized name “Mary” by the European couple that adopted her after she was orphaned. She’s just made the arduous 73-day journey from Aotearoa to North Yorkshire, England, after receiving a letter from a man claiming to know something of her heritage.
Unfortunately, after a not-so-friendly welcome from the locals, Mārama discovers that the man who summoned her has died. With few other options, she reluctantly accepts a job offer from whaling tycoon Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), who is looking for a governess for his niece, Anna (Evelyn Towersey).
The Facade of Cultural Appreciation in Mārama
Stephens initially portrays Cole as a warm and enlightened man with a deep appreciation for Mārama’s culture. He speaks the Māori language. His mansion is filled with Māori artifacts. But the warning signs are there from the start: a passing reference to the Māori people as “specimens;” a painting depicting the white man taming the “savages” on his wall. The deeper Mārama ventures into the stately home and grounds, the clearer it becomes that Cole’s proclaimed appreciation disguises appropriation in its darkest form: he takes whatever he wants, even that which is most sacred, most personal, and reduces it to mere decoration, to costume.
Stappard layers nuance into this portrait of colonial greed by contrasting Mārama’s experience with that of Cole’s servant, Peggy (Umi Myers), also a woman of color but not Māori. Peggy at first resents Mārama’s seemingly cushy existence in the house, highlighting the barriers to solidarity that can make it harder for marginalized groups to stand up to shared enemies. It’s all oppression, and of a kind that is especially heightened for women, but Cole’s fetishization of the Māori culture creates all-new avenues for objectification and harm.
Biting Back a Cry of Defiance
Osborne embues Mārama with quiet dignity and simmering rage as she navigates this perverse mirror of the culture she has been torn from. Combined with the oppressive, uneasy scoring from Karl Sölve Steven and Rob Thorne, her performance leaves the audience with a sick feeling in the pit of our stomachs. By the time we’re introduced to “Uncle Jacky” (Erroll Shand), a slimy white man with moko kanohi (Māori facial tattoos, symbolic of a person’s ancestry and achievements), we flinch at the sight right along with Mārama. We’re more than ready for her to burn the whole house down, but Stappard has more evils to unpack before granting any relief, including one devastating third-act reveal that will knock the breath out of you.
The horror in Mārama is quiet and understated, but the impact is profound. Stappard taps into staple elements of the jump scare industry as his hero experiences flashes of the terrible truth through frightening visions and dreams, but these are rarely accompanied by the typical jolting music stings. The lack of score in certain scenes leaves us to sit in our discomfort, but it also allows us to experience the full impact of Mārama’s defiance when she finally snaps and fights back, reclaiming her power and embracing her heritage. Osborne’s performance is simply transcendent, aching with pain and fury and a deep longing for everything that has been taken from her. This is “good for her” horror at its finest, and when the moment comes, it’s as cathartic as it is bittersweet.
The Perfect Evolution of Gothic Horror
Indigenous horror is still a relatively untapped well as a new generation of filmmakers fight for their seat at a table that wasn’t built with them in mind. Mārama is a shining example of all the stories that badly need to be told, and all the ways that the subgenres we love can benefit from an injection of fresh blood. The world that Stappard conjures is richly realized, with all its striking architecture and lush period costumes, inky shadows, and deep, bloody reds. It serves as a stark reminder of what Gothic horror does best: reveal that which has been repressed, forgotten but not silenced, demanding to be brought into the light.
The opening sequence of The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a promising start to what soon becomes a bafflingly bad movie. Since Chapter 1, I had been hopeful that the trilogy would find purpose for itself beyond being a remake. I honestly thought all the claims of Chapter 2’s irredeemable incompetence were just exaggerations meant to appease the algorithmic machine spirits. Let he who has not written an inflammatory article title cast the first stone.
But no. It actually is that bad.
We pick back up with our protagonist Maya (played by Madelaine Petsch) in the hospital, mourning the loss of her boyfriend to a trio of deranged masked killers. Struggling with wounds physically, mentally, and emotionally, she’s soon forced to get back on her feet and keep running after the titular strangers arrive at the hospital she’s recovering in.
Despite the honestly very strong camera work in this environment, the game is given away early. When you realize how long Maya’s been running from room to room, evading an axe-wielding maniac with cartoon logic, you soon understand the dire truth of the film as she escapes from the hospital morgue into the town: Oh good lord, we’re going to do this same thing for the entire movie aren’t we?
Yep, We’re Going to Do This Same Thing for the Entire Movie
If the final reel of The Strangers: Chapter 1 felt like a molasses drip, Chapter 2 in its entirety feels more like having people pour bottles of maple syrup out onto your face for 90 minutes. Something is technically happening, yes, but it’s the same thing over and over, slowly, and surprisingly very little happens in the grand scheme of things.
Maya runs, then walks, then trudges aimlessly as she flees her attackers, occasionally getting a hit in on them, and then flickering in and out of consciousness. Every character that could give some good insight disappears or dies before they can speak. The ones who do speak are all equal levels of ominous, hinting at the very obvious twist we’re approaching in the third film, that there are way more than three killers and that the rest of the town is in on it.
Large swathes of the runtime are dedicated to watching Maya struggle to do simple things in the wake of her injuries. There’s no mean-spirited nature or message to punctuate the suffering parade she marches on in; she is effectively just fast travelling from set piece to set piece via CTE and blood loss induced teleportation. And while that sentence may be very funny in the abstract, it gets very old very fast.
What Is Actually Going On, I Am So Confused
It’s in these set pieces where the most confusing choices of Chapter 2 abound. We get flashbacks of the Pin-Up Girl killer as a young child, explaining the origin of the Strangers ding-dong-ditching antics. The scenes are just as corny as you’d expect, pockmarked by nonsensical explanations and connections back to the main plot; this is ignoring the fact that it tries to give sense to what are supposed to, at their core, be senseless crimes. It’s like, the whole ethos of the series. There is no point.
The nonsense of it all comes to a crescendo around the midpoint, when the strangers eventually lose track of Maya, and decide there’s only one course of action to get her: release a tactical boar into the woods to hunt her down like a heat-seeking hog missile. What results is a scene so ridiculous that it’s only topped by the shonen anime style flashback Pin-Up Girl has to honor the boar’s demise, fondly remembering how she got the pig in the first place before weaponizing it into a one-ton murder beast.
None of this is a joke in any way, shape, or form. I am still genuinely confused as to how this was all just allowed to happen.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 Brings Technical Faux Pas on So Many Levels
Terrible story aside, it’s not like the film is saved on a technical level either. It’s largely lit like an IKEA commercial and shot in some locations, just like one too. The soundtrack is middling at best. The actual action is often shot shakily and edited in a manner so frantic that it would make early-2000s found footage blush with its visual instability.
The best I can say is that the practical effects to detail Maya’s wounds and subsequent sutures are great, but even then a finger curls on the monkeys’ paw as a trade; the film matches that with CGI blood at multiple points, blood that is so clumsily textured and layered on fabric that it made me nostalgic for the 2010s YouTube sketch videos they reminded me of.
Petsch’s performance is on par with her previous appearance in Chapter 1, still solid character work here, barring some cheesy moments that are like potholes in the road of the script. But when you’re fighting against a director who isn’t directing you in any meaningful way, and a script that doesn’t give you anything to work with, it really feels like she’s been left to spin her wheels. They don’t even let her act opposite Richard Brake for more than one scene, who spends most of the movie sitting in a diner drinking sweet tea with another officer. If anything is criminal here, it’s that. You don’t put Richard Brake in a corner!
Abandon All Hope for The Strangers: Chapter 3
For a film about masked killers, Chapter 2 is awfully mask-off about what it is— just the slow, low middle point in a nearly 5-hour movie that’s been cut into thirds. It’s a meandering stroll through some really alien choices in storytelling that ultimately feels hollow. It’s eerily reminiscent of the 2015 Martyrs remake, since that was also a complete trainwreck that didn’t understand what made its source material tick.
The Strangers: Chapter 2 is a trite hellbilly slasher at points, a played-out character study of its killers at others, and a limp thriller throughout where anyone can be the killer, and where ultimately, it doesn’t really matter who the killer is. While I wish I could say it’s insane failures in filmmaking will find itself a cult audience that loves bad horror, I don’t know if I fully believe that either. It lacks the heart necessary to be a cult classic. Whatever it is, it doesn’t bode well for whatever can of worms its finale has in store.
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[REVIEW] Fantastic Fest 2025: ‘Mārama’ Is a Lush Gothic Expression of Colonialism’s Scars
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