Rage. Anger. Dread. Fear. That’s what Marama is all about. It’s a pretty decent gothic horror movie highlighting the colonization of the Māori people in New Zealand during the 19th century. I don’t remember having seen many movies about the Māori people during the British colonization period and so I thought this would be a good one to maybe learn something new.

Marama is a slow burner of a movie but it does a good job at setting up the dark mood and vibe throughout the movie. Mary is one day summoned to the large castle estate of one Nathaniel Cole. Hoping to learn more about her family past, she reluctantly takes a position as governess to Nathan’s granddaughter, Anne. We learn that Nathaniel takes a really strong yet weird interest not only in Mary herself but of the Maori people in general. And I mean everything about them. From there, we learn bit by bit of his dark past as well as his relationship to Mary herself.

The end reveal, while not exactly unpredictable, makes up for it with a whole lot of blood and satisfying revenge bliss. So I take it that Nathaniel is some sort of sick and perverted man who gets off on possessing things. We see his huge collection of all things Māori, as well as his fluency in the language itself. His revealing his relationship to Mary drove me down a rabbit hole for a bit, as I have never been good at visualizing the whole family relationship/tree thing. So I assume that Nathaniel somehow brought Mary’s grandmother and mother to England after having his way with New Zealand. I don’t think it showed if both willingly came along or if they were treated as slaves, although I’m going with the latter. So he sires twins, Emilia and Mary. He subsequently then murders Mary’s mother and grandmother. At this point, a worker, Thomas, secretly whisks baby Mary away to be adopted, as he knew how harsh Nathaniel is. Emilia grows up and marries Nathaniel’s son (probably from another woman). We learn later that Arthur is actually gay and Nathaniel actually rapes Emilia herself, his biological daughter. Emilia gives birth to Anne, which makes her a niece to Mary. I think I got all that right.

The best scene obviously has to be when Mary took offense at the party when they started mocking the Māori people. She tries to control her anger but, alas, she caves in and gives the party members a real look at Māori culture. I think the most infuriating thing about this whole situation is how the audience members started clapping after Mary was done with her “performance”. We feel Mary’s frustration, knowing that her people’s culture is just a strange joke to these colonizers who have taken literally everything from them. The one thing I didn’t get is the scene when it showed Emilia giving birth to a baby and immediately smothering and killing it, having known the father of the baby is her own father as well. So does that mean Mary would have had two nieces and Anne would have had a brother/sister? I only ask because, in the end, we see Mary honoring all three of her dead family members (grandmother, mother, sister), but nothing is said about the dead baby.