Marama

imagineNATIVE 26 FILM FESTIVAL REVIEW! The old dark house in cinema gets darker than you could possibly imagine in the Maori gothic horror masterpiece Marama, written and directed by Taratoa Stappard. in 1859, Mary (Ariana Osborne), an orphaned Maori woman, has travelled 73 days days by ship from New Zealand to Victorian England, all because of a letter sent to her that promised the answer to the mystery of her parentage. Upon arriving, she is treated with utter disdain by her coachman (Jonno Roberts), who throws her out on the road, expecting her to get her luggage down the treacherously steep path to the mansion. At the door, she is greeted by Peggy (Umi Meyers), a servant who is a Maori like Mary is.

Once in, Mary is informed that the gentleman who wrote her, Thomas Boyd (Elliot Blakely), the assistant to the lord of the manor, former whaler Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), had died of smallpox several weeks earlier. Nathaniel immediately offers Mary a job as the governess for Anne (Evelyn Towersey), his 9-year-old niece. Cole states that his brother, Arthur (Jordan Mooney), cannot be a proper parent to Anne, as he is always falling down drunk. When Mary objects, stating she came all this way for information on her parents, Nathaniel reminds her that as a Maori, she doesn’t have any way to get any gainful employment in England. As she starts looking after Anne, Mary is haunted by terrible visions, including ghostly apparitions in the dark hallways in the house, screaming at her as she passes…

First and foremost, Marama is the most gothic movie ever made. It is the greatest visual accumulation of cinematic eeriness yet. It is beyond Burton, with no trace of black lipstick, as this movie’s lips were jet black at conception. It is even more gothic than Crimson Peaks, Reflecting Skin, and the OG granddaddy of the genre, Gothic. It doesn’t have any vampires in it, yet Marama is the movie every single vampire on the planet has been waiting centuries to see.

“The old dark house in cinema gets darker than you could possibly imagine…”

The magnificent cinematography by Gin Loane delivers one perfect portrait of darkness after another, creating the ultimate night gallery of sinister shot compositions. All the frames shudder with cobwebbed grandeur, creating a haunted world from which escape is impossible. The intensity of the visuals keeps intensifying until Stappard unleashes the big reveal, which shatters the audience’s senses into a fine, intoxicating powder.

Just don’t expect any cuteness or friendly Casper padding, as Marama is a ferocious horror picture that is as bloodcurdling as it is stylish. As disturbing as the ghost material is, it doesn’t hold a candle to the underlying abomination of what lies beneath the floating sheet. What starts as mysterious ends up as truly sickening, allowing the dread to build until it entombs the audience. This is punctuated by the fantastic fury of Osborne’s star-making performance, which will sink into your forehead like a metal stake driven in by a nine-pound hammer.

With Marama, Stappard shows the inhuman depths that colonization can plunge to. This isn’t saying the film primarily works as an allegory, as the condemnation of cultural demolition is organic to the muscle of the storyline. Very rarely has the main text and the subtext existed simultaneously as one, and never as violently as here. It is impossible to avoid the implications because there are none; there is just ghastliness. Stappard is reportedly planning a gothic trilogy, with this being the first installment. Just by itself, Marama represents one of the greatest triumphs for the dark side of the screen. This devil in a black dress has come to carry you far away.

Marama screened at the 2026 imagineNATIVE Film Festival.