Mother Mary: Honest Review — Is It Worth Watching? | 5.2/10

Mother Mary is an audacious swing at something genuinely weird, but it collapses under its own melodramatic weight long before the credits roll. David Lowery’s attempt to blend pop mythology with intimate trauma feels self-serious and scattered, leaving you wanting something the film never quite delivers.

Mother Mary: The plot (no spoilers)

Mother Mary reunites an iconic pop star with her estranged former costume designer Sam Anselm on the night before a comeback performance, dredging up old wounds and unspoken resentments that blur the line between present betrayal and haunted memory. The tagline insists “This is not a ghost story,” but Lowery’s film constantly flirts with supernatural interpretation, leaving viewers uncertain whether we’re witnessing psychological breakdown, actual spectral visitation, or just overwrought melodrama masquerading as art.

The tone wobbles wildly between intimate character study and fever-dream abstraction, oscillating between long silences and sudden outbursts that feel unmotivated even as the score swells operatically behind them. You’re meant to feel the weight of decades-old artistic partnership dissolved by fame and ego, but the movie trades specificity for vague emotional grandstanding, making it nearly impossible to root for either character or understand what we’re actually watching unfold.

Acting & direction

Anne Hathaway leans hard into Mother Mary’s theatrical fragility, delivering moments of genuine vulnerability buried under layers of exhausting affectation that seem less like character choice and more like script indulgence. Michaela Coel brings raw intelligence to Sam, wrestling with material that repeatedly shortchanges her intelligence for convenient plot turns, while Hunter Schafer and FKA twigs occupy supporting roles that feel like they wandered in from a different, possibly better film.

Lowery’s visual approach is undeniably confident—all muted palettes, elongated takes, and deliberate framing that announces itself as Serious Art with nearly aggressive emphasis. The cinematography is technically immaculate, all cool greens and shadow-heavy compositions, but it serves the mood at the expense of story momentum, turning what should feel like a conversation about art and abandonment into a glacial parade of lingering shots that feel more punishing than illuminating.

The strengths

• Anne Hathaway’s vulnerability occasionally pierces through the pretension, especially in her scenes with Coel, where genuine regret feels almost tangible for brief, stolen moments.
• The film’s refusal to explain everything and insistence on ambiguity would be admirable if it didn’t feel less like artistic mystery and more like unresolved narrative confusion masquerading as depth.
• There’s something genuinely unsettling about the soundtrack’s dissonant orchestration and the way sound design sometimes creeps under your skin even when the plot isn’t giving you much reason to care what happens next.

The weaknesses

• The central relationship between Mother Mary and Sam feels constructed from emotional abstractions rather than lived moments, making their conflict feel intellectually argued rather than viscerally felt in your bones.
• At two hours, this film moves like sedative is being pumped directly into its veins, prioritizing atmospheric brooding over momentum in ways that test even patient viewers’ tolerance for self-indulgent pacing.
• The **fantasy** and **thriller** elements feel bolted on afterward, never integrated organically into what’s fundamentally a two-hander about artistic resentment, creating tonal whiplash that kills whatever intimate power the quieter scenes might have achieved.

Who should watch it

If you’re deep into prestige indie cinema—the kind of viewer who’ll sit through **slow-burn character studies** and doesn’t mind when plot takes a backseat to atmosphere—you might find something here worth contemplating for days afterward. David Lowery completists should definitely check it out, as should anyone drawn to surrealist explorations of fame and artistic partnership, though fair warning: this isn’t Mulholland Drive or A Ghost Story; it’s considerably more interested in feeling important than actually being important.

Final verdict

Mother Mary wants desperately to be a shattering meditation on artistic betrayal and the ghosts that haunt creative partnerships, but instead it settles for looking serious while saying almost nothing of substance. The performances hint at something worth exploring, and Lowery clearly has command of his craft, but command isn’t the same as clarity, and technique without emotional payoff is just beautiful window dressing around an empty room. Skip it unless you’re contractually obligated to care about every Lowery project released, and even then, maybe wait for the home video release so you can pause and scroll through your phone guilt-free during the fifty-minute sequences of characters staring meaningfully into the middle distance.

Find more information about this film on IMDB.