aka The Secret of Marrowbone
(El Secreto de Marrowbone)
Spain. 2017.
Crew
Director/Screenplay – Sergio G. Sanchez, Producers – Belen Atienza, Alvaro Augustin & Ghislain Barrois, Photography – Xavi Gimenez, Music – Fernando Velazquez, Visual Effects – Lamppost (Supervisor – Alex Villagrasa), Special Effects Supervisor – Enric Masip, Makeup/Prosthetics Designer- Denise Kum, Animatronics – May Effects (Supervisor – Pablo Perona), Production Design – Patrick Salvador. Production Company – Telecino Cinema/Marrowbone/Rudios en el Atico, AIE/Movistar+.
Cast
George MacKay (Jack Marrowbone), Anya Taylor-Joy (Allie), Charlie Heaton (Billy Marrowbone), Mia Goth (Jane Marrowbone), Kyle Soller (Tom Porter), Matthew Stagg (Sam), Nicolas Harrison (Rose Marrowbone)
Plot
In 1969, Rose Fairburn flees from England to her abandoned family home in the USA, taking her children Jack, Jane, Billy and Sam with her. She insists they drop the name of their father and use her maiden name Marrowbone. However, she is ill and dies not long after. Before doing so, she bids Jack that he keep her death a secret until he turns twenty-one and can legally inherit the property. The children are fearful of their father, a convicted killer, finding them and at Rose’s insistence keep themselves hidden in the house. As they do so, there are fears lurking in the secrets they keep – about what is in the attic, about the insistence on keeping Rose’s bedroom locked and all mirrors in the house covered. Only Jack goes into the town where, unknown to the others, he has formed a relationship with their neighbour Allie, the town librarian. However, things are threatened when Tom Porter, the lawyer arranging the deal for the purchase of the property, who also has designs on marrying Allie, begins to pick at the secrets that the Marrowbone house holds.
Marrowbone was the second outing as director for Sergio G. Sanchez who had previously worked as a screenwriter for J.A. Bayona on films like The Orphanage (2007) and The Impossible (2012), as well as films for other directors such as The End (2012), Purgatory (2014) and creating the tv mini-series The Girl in the Mirror (2022). Sanchz had worked in music video and made his directorial debut with The Pianist’s Hands (2008). The film is executive produced by J.A. Bayona.
Marrowbone starts out beautifully. It reminds of a certain brand of British drama that waxes nostalgic about a lost Wartime childhood (even though we find the era is circa that of the Moon Landing). The use of landscape, the photography and period set dressings are all exquisite. About the only anachronistic touch I picked up on was reference to home-schooling three decades before the phrase entered into usage.
I was in particular reminded of Atonement (2007), which is not an inapt comparison given that the film undergoes some interesting similar Conceptual Reversal Twists. Maybe something akin to a mix of Atonement and J.A Bayona’s The Orphanage, a ghost story set in a big decaying house. The film sets up a similar big house with a good many hints of something dark and mysterious going on – why do the mirrors have to be covered? Why are the children bidden to stay out of the mother’s room? What is the reference to ‘blood money’ and the reluctance to use it? Why the hiding in the fort? What happened to the father? Even what is scuttling around in the wainscoting – just a racoon or something else as the mummified hand that comes out to grab Mia Goth suggests?
All of this sets up solid horror movie potential. The surprise then is that when Marrowbone comes to the reveal of its Conceptual Reversal Twist is that it is not a horror film. It instead [PLOT SPOILERS] becomes a work about split personality, not unlike the ending of Identity (2003) – somewhat. The surprise also is an ending that subverts all horror movie expectation and goes out on something surprisingly hopeful and sweet.
The fascination of the film is seeing a number of faces that were on the cusp of becoming more widely known. As the librarian love interest is Anya Taylor-Joy not long after The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015) and just before her explosion out as a major name. Mia Goth was a regular face at the time and this was made before her emergence into the wider spotlight with X (2022). George MacKay was just starting to emerge around this time in 1917 (2017), while Charlie Heaton had just made his appearance in tv’s Stranger Things (2016-25).
Trailer here