By Alex McPherson

Stunning, beguiling, and wholeheartedly its own thing, director David Lowery’s “Mother Mary” is a polarizing experience where pretentiousness is part of the charm.

This gothic-horror-romance-pop-song-chamber-drama follows the titular Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway), a world-famous, Taylor-Swift-adjacent popstar preparing a comeback tour after she experiences a harrowing onstage accident that we get a split-second glimpse of in the film’s opening moments.

Mary is exhausted and a hollowed-out shell of her former self. She has a panic attack during a costume fitting and rushes to the English countryside to make a surprise visit to her former best friend and costume designer Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). Sam harbors palpable resentment after being ghosted (no pun intended) 10 years ago. 

Mary is desperate for Sam to make her a dress for the tour so she can “be herself” and find “clarity.” Sam — with a prickly, slyly wolfish demeanor — agrees to take on the challenge. She also sees an opportunity for Mary to address past wrongs in their professional and personal relationship.

Within a foreboding barn-turned-workshop, Sam and Mary get to work, with Sam gradually unspooling years of resentment. Social niceties give way to daggers (and scissors) as the two confront the end of their creative partnership:

Sam’s tireless work to support Mary’s celebrity persona has largely gone unrecognized; the pressures of fame and of constantly being in the spotlight have taken a massive toll on Mary’s psyche and eroded her sense of self. Still, there’s work to be done and a deadline to meet. At least, until things get trippily metaphysical.

Yep, this is definitely a film by the director of “The Green Knight” and “A Ghost Story.” It floats along on its own visually astounding wavelength that never loosens its grip on its insistence for weirdness.

“Mother Mary” is ultimately a difficult experience to pin down — unimpeachable in its craft elements and its central performances, but strangely simplistic in what the narrative boils down to: a whole lot of stylistic extravagance for a story whose emotional beats feel oddly schematic.

Still, Lowery’s latest is a bizarre experience made with such conviction that even when the story’s reach exceeds its grasp, the mesmerizing, phantasmagorical, genre-bending style never loses its impact. “Mother Mary” demands to be watched on the big screen.

It’s filled with gorgeous costumes, eardrum-busting concert numbers (featuring songs by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs), intensely intimate drama, gnarly horror, and spectral beauty, where the past elegantly blends with the present. 

The shadow-drenched barn becomes a portal to Mary and Sam’s history and imaginations, where their spiritual connection to each other is realized in ways both deeply earnest and unnerving. “Mother Mary” renders the force between the women literal as they each grapple with the weights of their connection and regrets; Daniel Hart’s score’s pulsing bass resembles a beating heart.

Hathaway and Coel are wholly up for Lowery’s wild swings, with Coel in particular commanding her every second onscreen. Cinematographers Rina Yang and Andrew Droz Palermo often frame her in close-up;

Coel’s face almost seems alien at times, her character’s sharp features, deep voice, and acid tongue intimidating and imposing (and sometimes darkly funny), although Sam herself is a heartbroken soul searching desperately for closure. 

Hathaway gives an equally excellent performance as the tormented celebrity. We see the years of expectations and regrets weighing her down, and her embracing a completely different persona onstage amid blinding lights and screaming fans.

One of the film’s best sequences involves Mary showing Sam her dance routine without music — monstrous and animalistic, hinting at the film’s increasingly supernatural influences.

It’s frustrating that “Mother Mary” doesn’t make the characters’ journeys quite as resonant. Indeed, while the film is – mostly – enigmatic to its benefit, Mary and Sam are too thinly-sketched as characters for their relationship to have the emotional thrust “Mother Mary” insists it does.

The main appeal is seeing just what elaborately hallucinatory set-piece Lowery has in store next, rather than investment in their (bluntly-spelled-out) inner battles. The film is so sincere, so earnest, about matters of the heart, but it opts for spectacle, which betrays the more nuanced drama that would truly let viewers into Mary and Sam’s worlds.

So, “Mother Mary” is a bit of a mixed bag, albeit one that deserves to be celebrated nevertheless — creativity and eccentricity like this should be supported, whether or not it fully lands. It’s a beautiful mess.

“Mother Mary” is a 2026 dramatic music thriller written and directed by David Lowery starring Anne Hathaway, Michaela Coel, Kaia Gerber, Hunter Schafer. and FKA twigs,, Its runtime is 1 hour, 52 minutes, and it is rated R for some violent content and language. It opened in theatres April 24. Alex’s Grade: B+.