The Last Thing Mary Saw

Sometimes, the things that are necessary to a movie are also the things that hold it back. That is the case with The Last Thing Mary Saw. It is a fine folk horror, drenched in atmosphere and reveling in a slow burn of its tale about forbidden love between two young women in the early 19th century, and of a family tightly gripped by a perverted version of faith. The acting, the visuals, the attention to detail is all very well done. What hurts the movie, though, are those very things. The setting and subject matter demands the pace be a tiptoe and its secrets hinted at in whisper. I don’t expect big moments and jump scares, but the level of reservation on display here prevents the movie from developing momentum. Even when there’s a big “whoa!” reveal about a half hour in, not only does the movie not capitalize on it to add tension, the characters don’t seem shocked by it at all when they very well should be. It neuters the shocking revelation that something supernatural and sinister is at play here. Ultimately, this leaves the movie in this weird state of suspended animation. What defines it is also what confines it. It somehow feels like it is everything it could be, and yet what it is isn’t enough.