Writer-director David Lowery (Pete’s Dragon, The Green Knight) has now made two movies that center on a ghostly presence signified only by flowing cloth. In A Ghost Story (2017), Casey Affleck’s eponymous specter was nothing but a long white sheet with two eyeholes, a classic child’s drawing of a ghost whose comical-yet-spooky appearance brought a sense of playfulness to that melancholic parable about grief. Now, in Mother Mary, the ultra-basic male ghost has made way for an extra-fancy female one: a billowing bolt of crimson fabric that haunts both the movie’s main characters. This eerie, free-floating shape appears to them at crucial junctures in their lives, serving as a warning, a temptation, and a reminder of the literal and figurative threads that bind them. The Mother Mary of the title (Anne Hathaway) is a pop star who hasn’t performed or recorded a note since suffering a severe accident onstage during a world tour 15 years ago. Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) is the superstar’s former designer and stylist—and, to judge by an old snapshot of them mugging for the camera, her ex–best friend. (Were they ever lovers? Lowery’s screenplay never tips its hand, but the intensity of the bond the two share renders the question almost irrelevant.) Determined to return to the stage with a new stripped-down persona, Mother Mary shows…
Published: April 16, 2026 3:52 pm
Source: Slate — Read original