Mārama

Play nice is the ultimate message of Mārama, which the IMDb describes as “a Maori gothic revenge horror set in Victorian England, 1859”. You won’t find me disagreeing. The “revenge horror” takes a while to come, but there’s plenty of Maori gothic in the interim. Or plain old gothic, served up with a Maori central character on the wrong end of it. Mary (Ariana Osborne) arrives in England from New Zealand having been called to the other side of the world by a cryptic letter. By the time she gets there, in true gothic style the man who wrote it is dead. Instead she is greeted by Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens), the gracious … Read more