Far from home and haunted by visions, a Māori woman uncovers gruesome secrets inside an English manor. A bold, unsettling gothic tale of identity, memory, and colonial reckoning.
Taratoa Stappard’s brooding debut feature plunges us into the dour moors of 1859 North Yorkshire, where the British Empire’s reach casts long and twisted shadows. Mary Stevens (Ariāna Osborne), a young Māori teacher from Aotearoa (New Zealand), arrives in search of family truths, only to find the man who summoned her already dead and no clear path home.
Stranded in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming land, Mary accepts work at Hawkser Manor under the seemingly benevolent Sir Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), a wealthy landowner who made his fortune as a South Seas whaler. But within the manor’s cold stone walls — where stolen Māori taonga line the shelves and ancestral whispers echo through dark corridors — Mary’s unease curdles into dread.
Haunted by visions and memories that are not her own, she begins to unravel a horrifying truth. As the sinister nature of Cole’s intentions comes into focus, Mārama transforms into a blood-tinged reckoning that never shies from the grotesque. What begins as a search for identity becomes a fight for freedom, dignity, and spiritual survival.
With striking visual precision and a searing critique of colonial and cultural fetishisation, Stappard conjures a taut gothic atmosphere thick with foreboding. In doing so, he lays claim to a bold new cinematic territory: Māori Gothic, where the thin veneer of Victorian civility is torn away to reveal something truly monstrous beneath. Not ghosts or ghouls, but the legacy of empire itself.
JASON RYLE
Screenings
Scotiabank 10
Scotiabank 6
Scotiabank 11