TL;DR: A young Māori woman is pulled into a remote English manor where culture, power, and control are twisted into something deeply uncomfortable - it’s worth watching if you like slow, tense gothic stories with strong ideas, but it definitely tests your patience along the way.
A Manor That Feels Wrong From the Start
At the start of the film, a young Māori woman steps into a sprawling English manor filled with polished floors, polite voices, and people who smile a bit too carefully, after being summoned from Aotearoa, and nothing about the situation sits right from the beginning.
The house is too controlled, the host too composed, and the interest in her culture feelslike someone collecting something they think belongs to them - it has that “run while you still can” energy, except nobody is running because manners apparently matter more than survival instincts in 1859 England.
The Englishman at the centre of this mess, Nathaniel Cole, surrounds himself with Māori objects, language, and symbols, where he speaks te reo with a polished English accent that sounds rehearsed, like someone trying to impress a teacher they secretly resent.
He offers Mary a job as a governess, framed as generosity, but it’s obvious she’s being folded into his world on his terms, and there’s a quiet arrogance running through everything he says, the kind that assumes nobody will push back because the setting is so formal and “civilised.”
Mary doesn’t get the luxury of simply walking away though, as the film makes that clear without spelling it out in big dramatic speeches - she’s in a foreign place, tied to people who already decided what she is useful for.
What I really liked here is how restrained her reaction to everything is, because she doesn’t explode straight away, she absorbs, watches, and slowly starts noticing patterns, so the story doesn’t rush her into rebellion, which makes the eventual shift feel a bit more meaningful.
And Ariāna Osborne carries this balance off really well, with a quiet intensity, never overplaying emotion, but letting it surface in small ways.
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The Horror Isn’t What Happens, It’s What’s Normalised
This isn’t a film that relies on cheap shocks or a fast pacing from scene to scene, as all the discomfort comes from watching people treat control like culture and culture like decoration, where there’s a constant sense that something has been taken, rearranged, and presented back without understanding what it cost.
The manor itself becomes part of that idea too - Māori objects are placed like trophies, stripped of meaning, sitting inside a house that already belongs to someone else, and there’s also a ballroom sequence that sticks in my head more than anything else.
Not because of spectacle, but because of how casually people behave while everything underneath that moment is completely rotten, and this film is full of that queit constraint where everything is mainly happening in the background, and not being thrown in your face, which I suspect won't suit everyone, but I appreciated it.
The Middle Stretch That Tests Your Patience
This is where it tested me a lot, as the film slows down quite a bit in the middle, leaning heavily on mood and symbolism, and while sometimes that works, but sometimes it also felt like the story is pausing just to admire its own seriousness.
There are moments where I wanted it to move along and shift, something to shift, but you get another long stretch of quiet rooms and careful glances, where it does start to test attention, but while the ideas are still there, they are just stretched thinner than they need to be.
That blend of gothic drama, historical weight, and revenge narrative the film is going for also doesn’t always sit neatly together - some transitions are abrupt, like the film changes direction without fully warning you, which at times makes things feel slightly uneven.
The Ending and What It’s Building Toward
When the story finally pushes into its final stretch, things tighten up again thankfully, where the shift toward confrontation is more direct, and Mary finally stops absorbing and starts acting, and without giving too much away, the final movement is where everything the film has been circling comes together, where it's all about turning power back on the people who assumed they owned it in the first place.
But what works best in Mārama is its commitment to its central idea, because it doesn’t treat colonial history as a background decoration, it puts it right in the middle of everything and refuses to soften it, while the visual design of the manor and the way cultural objects are placed throughout it also leave a strong impression.
Final Thoughts
This isn’t a comfortable watch, and it doesn’t try to be one - it’s slow in places, heavy in tone, and sometimes a bit uneven, but I found it watchable because of what it’s actually saying underneath all of that - worth watching if you can sit with something that takes its time and doesn’t bother making itself easy.