Puritanical superstition, paranoia, and repression run rampant in 19th-century horror, especially when set in or near New England. Much like The Witch or Fear Street Part 3: 1666, The Last Thing Mary Saw is the latest to explore the haunting ramifications of unwieldy religious fanaticism. It doesn’t forge any new ground, but this atmospheric, intimate portrait of forbidden love does cast a relatively enticing spell thanks to its enigmatic, almost impenetrable witchcraft.
Writer/Director Edoardo Vitaletti opens his feature debut to a claustrophobic scene that sees Mary (Insidious: Chapter 3’s Stefanie Scott) reciting a prayer at gunpoint. She’s surrounded by fearful men certain that she’s a witch, but she can’t see them; blood trickling from beneath her blindfold implies recent blindness that sets up the title’s looming question. The narrative then jumps back to the winter of 1843, New York, to address that question piecemeal. A love affair with housemaid Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman) puts her at odds with her deeply religious family, putting her at the mercy of the unsettling Matriarch (Dead Silence’s Judith Roberts).
Vitaletti takes a methodical, unwieldy approach connecting the dots between Mary’s trial and the events that put her there. The suffocating atmosphere created by the oppressive and intolerant community snuffs out any semblance of happiness or joy. Mary’s sole source of comfort and pleasure, Eleanor, proves particularly offensive and spurns a series of grueling punishments for both. It’s the beginning of a series of mishaps and encounters that gradually reduce Mary’s limited agency more and more.
While Mary and Eleanor’s relationship plays an integral role, it’s exhibited as more of a catalyst than the focal point. Vitaletti presents claustrophobic oppression so well that it’s tough to get a read on who these characters are outside of it; it permeates everything. Mary and Eleanor are victims of their era, and glimpses of rebellion or personality outside of constricting societal obligation comes only in fleeting bursts. Fuhrman brings more fire to her oft wordless performance, but those scenes come too few. It’s Roberts’ potently creepy portrayal of the Matriarch that steals the entire film.
The grey winter setting perfectly captures the somber, quiet tone; this is a definitive slow burn mood piece. Long stretches go by without dialogue, and Vitaletti keeps things so close to the vest that even more striking horror imagery and moments can confuse. It’s by design; the filmmaker wants you to read between the lines or fill in those empty stretches of silence. Vitaletti offers the most significant clues in the narrative structure, broken down into chapters to mirror the book Eleanor reads and through the Matriarch. It’s the latter that exemplifies the film at its most compelling.
The Last Thing Mary Saw presents a series of unsettling interactions and moments of repression-induced horror. Vitaletti crafts a period mood piece that assembles genre stalwarts that effectively contribute to this claustrophobic tale of witchcraft and paranoia. Much like its chapter book format, his feature debut is cohesive in feel only. The horror creeps in ever so slowly, and the answer to the title question is a somewhat satisfying one. It’s a polished effort that perfectly encapsulates the doom of suffocating repression. But there’s not much there beyond the surface, and the filmmaker renders his mythology a little too imperceptive.
