The Reel Review
A young Maori woman orphaned as a child travels from New Zealand to Victorian England in 1859 to learn what happened to her family. A series of clairvoyant visions gradually reveal a horrific truth. Ariana Osborne and Toby Stephens (The Severed Sun, Lost in Space) star in this gothic horror/mystery.
Writer/director Taratoa Stappard swings for the fences in his surreal fever dream of a film debut, capturing the imperialist terror that British colonizers unleashed on New Zealand’s native Maori following explorer Captain James Cook’s arrival in the late 1700s. Surreal visuals and a disturbing score help set a creepy mood.
Ariana Osborne gives a commanding performance as Mārama, the Maori woman who grows increasingly incensed when she learns the brutal history of her family. The uneven pacing in the first hour picks up in the much more unhinged third act, as she decides she has had enough of this nonsense and takes revenge.
REEL FACTS
• Ariana Osborne is the daughter of former All Blacks rugby legend Glen Osborne, who is now a TV personality and police officer in Whanganui on New Zealand’s North Island.
• The second version of the song in the closing credits, about a mother grieving her daughter, is sung by the director’s mother.
• Although set in North Yorkshire, England, Marama was filmed in Auckland and Dunedin, New Zealand.
Video & Photo
