Like Sinners, a film that uses the built-in expressive extremism of the horror genre to address racial and ethnic cultural abuses, writer-director Taratoa Stappard’s nuanced and chilling Mārama presents a gothic horror story linked to colonization of the Māori people of New Zealand. It’s essentially a haunted-property tale, with apparitional residue of past lives and past horrors. In fact, the very process of tracing lineage and ancestry, and of making shocking discoveries, is central to the film's narrative.
In Mārama, the story is set in the strategically limited, dank, and secluded region of North Yorkshire, England, in 1859. But the presiding and underlying story is far removed in time, place, and culture. Played with a quiet but righteous intensity by Ariāna Osborne, Mary — original name Mārama — is at least part Māori, orphaned and adopted by English parents, westernized and educated. She travels to England, to Hawkser Manor, seeking the facts of her roots and parents.
Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), the head of the estate, wants her to stay as a governess to young Ann, but the plot continues thickening and sickening, as we learn the sordid history beneath the surface. In that haunted environment, Mary starts channeling and dreaming of evil goings-on against her family, and ghostly elements from her past creep into her world and the film’s mise-en-scène.