Mārama Review: Cold Vengeance From the South Pacific

Aotearoa. That’s what the Māori called New Zealand before colonizers stole and occupied it. Nearly three centuries later, many feel that there has been no real reckoning, and so Taratoa Stappard’s Mārama gives at least a glimpse of what that angry recompense might look like, albeit through a Victorian Gothic frame.

This is the highest of high Gothic. In North Yorkshire in 1859, everything is bleak and shadowy, the trees have lost their leaves, and every wall is painted black in the mansion of the enigmatic Nathaniel Cole (Toby Stephens) and his ailing, drunken son, Arthur (Jordan Mooney). Whaling money paid for the darkened house, and whaling money allows for Nathaniel to bring Mary (Ariāna Osborne) all the way from New Zealand to the other side of the world to be the governess for Arthur’s daughter, Anne (Evelyn Towersey). Born Māori but raised by Europeans, for Nathaniel she is the perfect choice to raise his granddaughter, since he is obsessed with Māori culture. Yet it quickly becomes clear that his interest in Mary goes beyond his fluency in her native tongue.

The location is apt: not simply does it allow writer/director Stappard to inherit and subvert the Gothic traditions of Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre, but it’s also historically accurate, since the Yorkshire whalers set sail for the South Pacific from the craggy coastal town of Whitby. But Stappard is undoubtedly interested in the most lurid and violent aspects of true high Gothic (or at least the Hollywood version of it) as a tale unfurls of murder, hidden passageways, closeted homosexuality, separated twins, incest, and supernatural visions. What makes Mārama intriguing is that this becomes the background for a story of cultural revenge, even if the conventions of the genre often threaten to engulf those more subtle aspects,

It’s undoubtedly a chilling and bleak version of the Gothic oeuvre, all wooden paneling and huge-skirted dresses. Cinematographer Gin Loane strips out all hue except for scarlet – the color of silk, the color of blood – and illuminates only the center of the screen with point light sources like candles and lanterns. When the light does expand beyond those narrow pools, production designer Nick Williams, art director Andy Currie, and set decorator Grace Mok tread a delicate but effective line between evocation of the era’s excesses and an austere, almost minimalist aesthetic. It’s an effective choice, creating a near-mythical Yorkshire that couldn’t quite be achieved by the New Zealand filming locations.

Stappard undoubtedly evokes the particular form of mystery that the Gothic evokes, the kind that swirls like mist. Yet Mārama is arguably at its most effective as a political text when it isn’t trying so hard to be part of the heritage that includes Hitchcock’s Rebecca and del Toro’s Crimson Peak. The most shocking and powerful scene is at a party held in Mary’s honor: She is dressed in the attire of an English lady, while all the guests wear disgusting, racist mimicries of the clothing of her Māori ancestors. The implication, it’s clear, is that at least some of it was stolen by Nathaniel.

It’s in this moment, as the spoiled guests degrade her history, that Mary’s rage truly boils, and Osborne can really express her righteous anger. It’s also the scene in which Erroll Shand, as Nathaniel’s former first mate turned right-hand man, reveals himself as a force of malevolence. There’s a clarity to his vileness that stands in strange contrast to Mary’s true nemesis, and Stephens turns Nathaniel into a surprisingly complicated figure, a man who doesn’t understand the difference between loving a thing and seeking to control it. In him, Stappard creates a dark metaphor for the lines between cultural appreciation, cultural appropriation, and sheer colonialism. Either way, his role in stealing Mary’s connection to her history is quickly undeniable and a moral crime: There’s no recompense here, Stappard seems to say, only revenge, and the return of what is lost.

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This article appears in May 1 • 2026.