Mother Mary Is A Gorgeous Nightmare You Won’t Want To Wake From

They say hatred is a curse, a spell that poisons the wielder more than the object of their ire. Director David Lowery certainly believes in the former, but his latest trip into the surreal is more than happy to debunk the latter, too. The filmmaker is the unsung master of the metaphysical; the odd possession is a staple of his oeuvre. And sure, it’s all a metaphor for grief or ambition, a manifestation of some emotion suppressed or denied. With Mother Mary, though, the veil between what’s real and what isn’t — what can hurt us and what haunts us — feels thinner, more dangerous, and more intoxicating than ever.

Few would guess, after lo-fi ghost stories, epic reconstructions of ancient myths, and a misguided update of a classic Disney property, that Lowery would so eagerly turn his gaze to pop fantasia. The director’s follow-up to Peter Pan & Wendy is farther from what most have come to expect from him than anything else: early trailers of the A24 film insist that it is neither a ghost story nor a love story, two themes that Lowery has demonstrated the most success with. But that assertion is also a kind of misdirection, as Mother Mary borrows a little from both — and so much more — to craft something utterly new. Part-ghost story, part-exorcism, part-pop manifesto, part-chamber piece, it turns the proverbial string of fate into a throbbing sacred heart. An ethereal soundtrack (crafted by Charli XCX, Jack Antonoff, and FKA twigs) opens the door to a realm not unlike our own, dragging us into a dream world that we won’t want to escape.

Mother Mary is more generally supernatural and surreal, using Lowery’s themes of choice to deliver a new take on ego dissolution. That’s not to say that Anne Hathaway’s Mother Mary isn’t haunted by something as she gears up for a major comeback. It’s been months since her last concert ended in catastrophe — quick flashes of smartphone footage see her falling from an impossible height, back snapped by the very wires designed to protect her — but to fully understand what’s been ailing the pop icon, one has to go back even further. It’s less about the guilt of traumatizing thousands of fans than it is about abandoning her most loyal collaborator, Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel). For years they were inseparable, Sam instrumental in creating the Mother Mary that brought the world to its knees. Sure, MM always had the sound: a palatable dose of avant-pop that takes cues from twigs’ own heady discography, Reputation-era Taylor Swift, and Katy Perry’s newfound brand of mall pop. It’s catchy, but you also kind of understand Sam when the pair finally reunite — over a decade after Mary “closed the door” — and she gleefully tries to keep her anti-MM “streak” alive.

But making interesting music is not really MM’s issue: as she later brags to Sam, her latest single, “Spooky Action,” might be the “best song in the history of songs.” No, the problem is the dress her team of yes-men has constructed for her comeback tour. It doesn’t feel like her; it doesn’t live up to the premise of her new song, which nods to Einstein’s term for quantum entanglement, a connection that persists despite distance and time. It’s a song that’s both about Sam and an attempt to shed the ties that keep them bound. But just as the totality of Sam’s creative prowess is wrapped up in Mary, Mary’s entire identity is owed to Sam. It was she who transformed Mary from an upstart indie artist into a corporeal deity. If MM headlined Coachella, Sam was right by her side; if she appeared on the cover of Vogue, it was in Sam’s Joan-of-Arc-inspired frocks. She has not been the same since closing that door, and she can’t shed the burden of her legacy without mending fences with Sam.

Despite its thrumming score and splashy visuals, Lowery’s latest is a lot quieter than one might expect. MM’s onstage moments are few and far between; instead, the bulk of Mother Mary is confined to Sam’s rickety atelier. It’s just she and Mary alone in the shed that houses her archive, and Lowery gives the film almost entirely to Coel, who calmly and quietly unspools Sam’s festering anger like a never-ending handkerchief spilling out of her tailored sleeve. It’s an inspired choice, as the British actor turns each well-woven line into a morsel of gold. We hang on Sam’s every word as she recounts the tale of her bond with Mary, reconstructing their lives like she might the dress that Mary has begged her to make (and with only 24 hours on the clock). It’s all relatively grounded until it suddenly isn’t, and the pain of her abandonment manifests in the form of a ghostly specter — red like a rose petal, or bloody gauze, or the gossamer that once draped Mary’s frame.

Hathaway, meanwhile, is helpless to do much more than stand there and stomach the sling of arrows Sam hurls her way, swallowing her pride with the disposition of a wet cat — that, or glide across a massive stage looking regal and untouchable in the film’s interspersed concert scenes. She’s doing a lot with a sour look and/or an easy, ethereal smile. But it’s in the moments where she takes some autonomy back — or maybe, finally, gives herself over to something she can’t explain — that Hathaway really ascends. Mother Mary uses dance as a bridge that connects the physical and spiritual, planting Mary smack in the midst of that gap. When she shows Sam the dance that will accompany “Spooky Action,” the Madonna-esque, stomp-heavy sequence eventually takes on the body language of possession. Lowery reinforces that eerie feeling with a cameo from FKA twigs, who combines her body-twisting athleticism with the street dance known as Krumping in one of the film’s most gleefully disturbing sequences.

It may take some time to truly get to the spooky action Lowery promises — and to understand the string of fate twisted up inside his heroines — but some indulgent, slow-wrought table setting is a small price to pay for the phantasmagoria that eventually follows. Mother Mary is a lot of things: a sensory experience, a siren song, and a cry for help. It makes sense that this script began as a two-hander between the metaphorical halves of Lowery’s artistic brain. Questions of selling out, of finding utility and relevance in the move from one era to the next, haunt the ever-evolving conversations between Mary and Sam. Then there’s the role that hate plays in the proceedings, the question of whether the ghost haunting Mary isn’t also draining something out of Sam. Lowery peppers in the creepy, arresting imagery he’s so known for with help from cinematographers Andrew Droz Palermo and Rina Yang, but Mother Mary truly sings when he scales back the spectacle to let the crafts (like the costumes from Tár designer Bina Daigeler) take center stage.

Mother Mary is both dizzyingly deep and deceptively simple. Immaculate metaphors take on totemic new life here: a song is more than just a song; Sam’s shears are for more than cutting cloth. So too is this more than its mounting tension. The true pleasure of Lowery’s latest comes from untangling the thread — the claustrophobia is compelling, but the director also knows that there’s nothing more transcendent than catharsis.

Mother Mary opens in theaters on April 17.