The Last Thing Mary Saw is an oppressively stifling suspense/drama with a scattered of horror elements. This is a film that will hold you down, apply pressure on your chest till you gasp for air… or it might just bore the guts out of you. It worked for me though… mostly.

Set in the 1800s, the film is about Mary, daughter of a wealthy yet isolated family and her illicit attraction to the maid. Given how deeply, fundamentally, judgmentally religious this family is, this doesn’t go over so well.

The atmosphere in this flick is oppressive to the point of abuse. It has a droning, skin-crawling soundtrack that rarely lets up. If the movie works for you, you’ll feel trapped and watched constantly. Unable to breath from the stifling mannered superiority everyone throws at our leads. It’s uncomfortable, maddening, and frustrating.

It probably also goes on a little too long and starts to lose some of that air… though its third act dinner scene in near silence is mesmerizing for everything implied and not said.

The film includes a few small and yet major and yet cryptic supernatural horror elements late in the game. And you might come away thinking it needed to lean more into that or lean away from it completely since it was already a dreadful enough sit.

In the end, I wasn’t satisfied with the movie’s conclusion. Not because I can’t stand a bad ending but because the ending they chose felt… not underwhelming… maybe not tragic enough? Or maybe too casually defeatist? Or maybe quietly vengeful? Something wasn’t right even though it probably ended exactly the way it should have. And if that makes no sense, that’s because I’m struggling with how I feel about it.

But, hey, a lot of credit for being able to generate a dense atmosphere that makes you feel trapped. I like the movie’s use of silence in both its acting choices and sound design (when it’s not hammering your soul with its dirges). If only it ended in another way… but I’m not sure what way that should have been.

Score: 78