PREMISE
Long-buried wounds rise to the surface when iconic pop star Mother Mary reunites with her estranged best friend and former costume designer, Sam Anselm, on the eve of her comeback performance.
THE GOOD STUFF
THE 1ST 30 MINUTES- Contrary to popular opinion, dialogue-driven character dramas can be pretty effective in 2026. The first 30 minutes of this film are a back-and-forth between the Anne Hathaway and Michaela Coel characters. They have enough chemistry on screen, there is genuine underlying hostility that drives their conversations, and the performances are so good that it is a compelling watch, all things considered. Hathaway and Coel are fantastic as always. You can see how weary their characters are by the world around them, and you can just feel the exhaustion that they project in the first section of this film.
TECHNICAL DETAILS- The camera work here is top-notch. There are multiple different shots in this movie that could be flat-out screensavers. Costumes and production design are done so well that one could consider this the best-looking A24 film that’s out there. (given what I must assume to be a modest budget) The pop songs that are sprinkled throughout the soundtrack kind of slap. I don’t know if Hathaway is singing those songs herself tho. I’m very aware that she is a good singer and that it’s not ridiculous to suggest that she couldn’t, but I just can’t find any confirmation of it at this time.
THE BAD STUFF
THE FKA TWIGS…STUFF- This is the section of the film that is the 50-yard line between the good stuff and the REALLY bad stuff. Twigs kicks off the negativity with the most overdone and cringeworthy performance of 2026 so far. There are many movies with scenes where a character becomes possessed by a spirit. There are plenty of Ouija board scenes this could have drawn from and done in a traditional way. But instead, what we get is a scene done with zero special effects whatsoever, completely dependent on the actress’s performance. I don’t know why you would trust FKA Twigs with something like this, especially if you’re going to use no CGI.
THE UGLY STUFF
THE 3RD ACT DIALOGUE- After this FKA Twigs section of the film, for some reason, every character henceforth speaks in this euphonious yet esoteric dialogue. Every single character starts speaking slower, with more syllables, and in an Iambic pentameter-ish kind of way. It gets to a point where characters are taking 2-3 second pauses in the middle of sentences just to make things sound more mythical. It is somewhat understood that the language would change given how the second act of this movie is, but there’s such a thing as overdoing it, and they cross that line.
THIS F****** CGI- I am absolutely stupid on how a movie with this level of cinematography can resort to computer-generated effects that are this F****** bad. There are not many special effects shots in this movie, to be fair, but CGI does play an integral part of the second act of this movie. And when you have SYFY-channel level of special effects, it completely derails whatever interest you had in the proceedings that are going on.
I wouldn’t go so far as to call this film pretentious, but I would go so far as to say that this film really did not believe in the theory that “less is more”. Ultimately this is a story about forgiveness, but it badly wants to be a mind f*** movie and it didn’t even set itself up to be that. There’s so much good and so much bad here. The ratio of bad to good is probably 60/40, but before the last 25 minutes, there was no bad-to-good ratio. Really disappointing stuff.
MOTHER MARY is in theaters now
