The Last Thing Mary Saw

89 Minutes, Not Rated

Written and Directed by Edoardo Vitaletti

Synopsis:

Southold, New York, 1843: Young Mary (Stefanie Scott), blood trickling from behind the blindfold tied around her eyes, is interrogated about the events surrounding her grandmother’s death. As the story jumps back in time, we witness Mary, raised in a repressively religious household, finding fleeting happiness in the arms of Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), the home’s maid. Her family, who believe they are seeing, speaking, and acting on God’s behalf, view the girls’ relationship as an abomination, to be dealt with as severely as possible. The couple attempt to carry on in secret, but someone is always watching, or listening, and the wages of perceived sin threaten to become death, with the tension only heightened by the arrival of an enigmatic stranger (Rory Culkin) and the revelation of forces other than the Lord at work.

The Last Thing Mary Saw (TLTMS) is the latest entry in the “let’s transplant the discussion about the LGBTQ+ community to an earlier time, when religious persecution for everything from witchcraft to blasphemy was dealt with in the most repressive way possible” canon of films.

This trend was most lately seen in Fear Street Part 3: 1666, but was also a big part of recently successful films as Portrait of a Lady on Fire and Ammonite.

But I digress.

Let’s talk about the film as a film, rather than as a socio-political treatise, shall we?

As the first feature from writer/director Edoardo Vitaletti, TLTMS desperately wants to be the next The Witch, with its colonial trappings and long, brooding shots of said trappings. Pair that with a couple of quality actresses in Scott and Fuhrman, and you’d think that this was a slam dunk of a film.

That might be a stretch.

Think, lay-up.

The story, for all it’s brou-haha about the “forbidden love” between Mary and Eleanor, feels rather pedestrian, set as it is during a time of righteous religious fervor paired with overwhelming, waning (but not gone) superstition.

And the enjoyability of the film suffers a bit from that. It might have behooved the filmmaker to move it forward in time a bit in order to wear away more of that fervor while moving the superstition even farther down in the consciousness of the characters.

That is not to take anything away from the cast; Scott and Fuhrman are wonderful: Scott as the more innocent-seeming of the two, with Fuhrman feeling more in-tune with her character’s desires, as if she has been dealing with them longer.

As the Matriarch of the family, Judith Roberts is, as to be expected, overwhelmingly iron-handed and dictatorial, even in such a patriarchal community as theirs, when men traditionally would be the voice and law of the household.

Rory Culkin, as “The Intruder” gives another fine character performance, though the true nature of his character is never really given, and so remains a kind of enigma, whose presence is there to move the other characters along, which culminates in a tragic event during the Matriarch’s wake.

Particularly effective for the actors was that period, during which a vow of silence is taken while mourning, leaving our cast to rely solely on movement and expression to convey what is going on behind their eyes.

Sadly, the predictability of the overall story makes it easier for the audience to determine this, which undermines the often exemplary manner in which the actors perform in this final act.

Overall, TLTMS is a good, but not great, film. It is one worth seeing, however.

The Last Thing Mary Saw Premieres at the Fantasia Film Festival on August 15 and 17.

The Last Thing Mary Saw stars Rory Culkin, Isabelle Fuhrman, Judith Roberts, and Stefanie Scott.

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