USA. 2021.
Crew
Director/Screenplay – Edoardo Vitaletti, Producers – Harrison Allen, Madeleine Schumacher & B. Stephen Tedeschi Jr., Photography – David Kruta, Music – Keegan Dewitt, Visual Effects – Perry Kroll & Jonathan Powell, Production Design – Charlie ‘Chaspooley’ Robinson. Production Company – Intrinsic Value Films/Arachnid Films/Island View Productions.
Cast
Stefanie Scott (Mary), Isabelle Fuhrman (Eleanor), Judith Roberts (The Matriarch), PJ Sosko (Theodore), Elijah Rayman (Matthew), Michael Laurence (Randolph), Stephen Lee Anderson (The Grandfather), Rory Culkin (The Intruder), Daniel Pearce (The Interrogator), Carolyn McCormack (Agnes), Tommy Buck (Eustace), Shane Coffey (Eustace’s Son), Dawn McGee (Ann)
Plot
Southold, New York, 1843. A constable has come to interrogate the blinded Mary about the events that occurred. Her family were gravely concerned about the ‘unnatural affection’ that Mary showed towards the maid Eleanor and administered punishments in an effort to drive the sin out of her. Despite this, Mary and Eleanor contrived to see one another, sneaking out to hold night-time liaisons in the chicken coop. However, there was knowledge of dark sorcery and poisons in the family and these started to emerge in the girls’ fight against the religious authoritarianism of Mary’s family.
The Last Thing Mary Saw was a directorial debut for Edoardo Vitaletti. The film appeared in several horror film festivals and gained reasonable word of mouth.
The Last Thing Mary Saw strikes from the starkness of its opening scenes. The film opens on the interrogation of the blindfolded Stefanie Scott, where the figures questioning her all come in black and crowd the frame out. The colour has been bleached from the screen so that everything seems to be taking place only in black and a grey-pink colour where the skies outside and human skin all seem the same tone. Scenes are often shot by candlelight, or at least give the impression that they are.
The stark severity of the religious world is something that reminds of Robert Eggers’ The Witch: A New-England Folktale (2015). Although there are very different things in play in either – a fear of witches for Eggers, the attempts to stamp out an ‘unnatural’ girl-girl attraction here – there is the same sense in both films of a harsh, religiously dominated family determined to stamp out sin and oppress human nature. There is also a good number of similarities to Lizzie (2018) and its forbidden lesbian relationship between the daughter and the maid in a puritanical 19th Century household.
The film represents a striking and original new talent in Edoardo Vitaletti, who makes his debut here. The seamless mood that Vitaletti achieves with his unison of lighting, colour schemes and costuming is something that mature directors never do in their entire careers. The daughter is played by Stefanie Scott, whom one might remember as the teenager in a couple of the Insidious sequels. Better known is Isabelle Fuhrman, the now grown-up Esther from Orphan (2009), who gives a performance of subtle gradations. The most charged sequence is the one where Stefanie Scott serves up poisoned tea to a family dinner table and we watch everybody expire.
The film sits on a borderline as a genre work. It is primarily a film about religion and repression. On the other hand, there are vivid fantastique moments such as where the grandmother (Judith Roberts) appears and levitates Isabelle Fuhrman’s body in the air and appears to place some sort of thorn into Isabelle’s throat, after which Isabelle can no longer speak. There are also the scenes subsequent to the grandmother’s death where we see her blackened finger twitching as she lies in rest and then her rising from the coffin. Quite what the grandmother’s abilities are and how they sit alongside a Christian household is something the film never delves into.
Trailer here