There are religious horror movies that warn you about the dangers of sin, and then there’s The Last Thing Mary Saw, which mostly warns you about the dangers of living with your family.
Set in 1843 in Southold, New York, the film traps you inside a rigid Calvinist household where joy is basically contraband and women are ornamental until they step out of line—at which point they become problems to be solved. Usually with prayer. Sometimes with violence. Often with both.
It’s slow-burn, quiet, and deeply, gloriously petty in its depiction of religious hypocrisy. It’s also a tender, tragic queer love story and a cleverly restrained folk horror that lets implication do most of the screaming.
Love in the time of damnation
Our protagonist, Mary (Stefanie Scott), is introduced in the present timeline with blood leaking from under a blindfold, being interrogated by a stern official about the death of her family’s Matriarch. So right away we know:
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Something went horribly wrong.
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Mary has seen some things.
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Whatever she saw, it was apparently illegal enough to need a blindfold and an inquest.
The film then rewinds to show us how we got there.
Mary lives in a brutally pious household where:
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Conversation is controlled
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Affection is regulated
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And the Bible is wielded less like a comfort and more like a weapon with very small print
Her only real joy is Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman), the maid—soft-spoken, observant, and very much not part of the family’s plans for Mary’s soul. The two girls have a secret romance that is gentle, believable, and doomed from roughly the first second anyone sees them glance at each other for longer than 0.75 seconds.
Naturally, the family doesn’t approve. And by “doesn’t approve” I mean:
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They stage “corrective” prayer sessions
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Imply demonic influence
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And treat basic human affection like an occult ritual
To be fair, in this family, a smile probably counts as witchcraft.
The Matriarch: stiff, severe, and unsettling
Enter The Matriarch (Judith Roberts), the ancient spine of the household. She’s frail in body but terrifying in presence, the kind of woman who can say, “We will pray on it” and somehow make it sound like a death sentence.
Her rules are absolute:
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The word of God, as interpreted through her, dictates everything
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Deviance must be “corrected”
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Love that doesn’t fit the script must be punished
She’s not a cackling villain so much as a calcified system of belief in a lace cap, which is somehow even scarier.
When Mary and Eleanor are caught together (because of course), the Matriarch institutes a system of… let’s call it spiritual torture with excellent candlelight:
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Forced kneeling
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Endless prayer
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Psychological humiliation
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All under the banner of “repentance”
The family’s idea of mercy is less “forgive us our trespasses” and more “we will erase you until only obedience remains.” It’s deeply disturbing, but the film plays it with such quiet understatement that the cruelty seeps in slowly, like cold.
When your home becomes a haunting
Though there’s mention of “greater forces” at work, one of the smartest choices the film makes is keeping the supernatural element ambiguous for a long time.
Is this:
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A story of religious madness, which feels like haunting?
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A genuine brush with the demonic?
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Or the universe quietly siding with two girls who just wanted to kiss in peace?
You could argue any of the above.
There are:
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Rituals
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Ominous symbols
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A mysterious book
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And subtle hints that something more than human might be steering events
But the real horror is in the social structure:
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The men are rigid and cowardly
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The women in power uphold cruelty as godliness
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And everyone is so committed to moral purity that they willingly poison their own bloodline
Honestly, if a demon is involved, it’s probably just watching like, “Wow. You guys are really handling this on your own.”
Enter the intruder: Rory Culkin and chaos
As if things weren’t tense enough, an enigmatic intruder (Rory Culkin) arrives, and the energy shifts from “oppressive domestic horror” to “we’ve added a raccoon with a knife into this already unstable ecosystem.”
He’s:
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Mysterious
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Scarred
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Obviously dangerous
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And somehow still a more honest presence than anyone at the dinner table
His arrival is like lighting a match in a room full of low-level gas leaks. He doesn’t so much start chaos as accelerate what’s already there. The sense that Mary’s family would rather kill than change is brought to a head in his scenes, and the film tilts—quietly but decisively—toward tragedy.
Performances: repression, rage, and rebellion
The cast is restrained and excellent across the board:
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Stefanie Scott’s Mary is all tight shoulders and swallowed words, with a stubborn core of defiance that refuses to be prayed out of her. Watching that quiet steel finally harden is one of the film’s great, understated pleasures.
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Isabelle Fuhrman’s Eleanor is tender but not fragile. She’s fully aware of her position as a servant and an outsider, and that awareness gives her relationship with Mary a constant edge of risk. Their affection feels real—not melodramatic, but desperate in the way only forbidden love can be.
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Judith Roberts as the Matriarch is terrifying, and she barely has to raise her voice. The way she carries that frail body with absolute conviction says more about the ugliness of righteous certainty than any sermon could.
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Rory Culkin slinks in like living bad news, but there’s something wounded in him too; he’s a reminder that cruelty in that world doesn’t stop at the front door—it runs through the whole society.
Everyone plays it straight, which lets the dark humor seep in through the cracks: the politeness wrapped around threats, the way scripture is wielded like a legal clause, the sheer absurdity of people so obsessed with heavenly love that they are willing to brutally stamp out earthly love in their own house.
Folk horror in miniature
Visually and tonally, The Last Thing Mary Saw sits firmly in the folk-horror family:
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Rural isolation
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Old beliefs
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A sense that something ancient and hungry is either watching… or just being invoked as an excuse for more human cruelty
The house itself feels like a character:
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Dark wood
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Sparse rooms
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Lantern light that makes everything look like a painting of misery
The film’s rhythm is unhurried. If you want jump scares, this is not your ride. But if you like your horror:
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Slow
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Heavy with atmosphere
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Built on dread, repression, and a creeping sense that everyone’s soul is rotting under the weight of “righteousness”
…it’s deeply satisfying.
Sin, punishment, and the last thing she saw
Because we know from the beginning that:
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The Matriarch is dead
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Mary has blood in her eyes
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Something terrible has happened
The whole movie becomes a slow-motion march toward a moment you’re both dreading and morbidly curious about.
When that moment finally arrives, it’s:
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Grim
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Inevitable
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Laced with a quiet, spiteful irony that fits perfectly with the film’s tone
Let’s just say this: in a household obsessed with salvation, almost nobody gets saved. But there’s a strong sense that the system itself—the faith twisted into cruelty and control—gets exactly what it deserves.
In that sense, the film is oddly cathartic. Not happy, exactly. But there’s a fierce, dark satisfaction in watching a family so determined to destroy love end up choking on the consequences.
Final thoughts: holy terror, queer sorrow
The Last Thing Mary Saw is:
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A mournful queer love story
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A vicious little indictment of religious authoritarianism
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And a folk horror chamber piece that swaps big scares for lingering unease
It’s not flashy. It doesn’t hold your hand. It trusts you to sit with ambiguity and let the implications crawl under your skin.
If you’ve ever watched a period piece about “good Christian families” and thought, “Yes, but what about the people crushed under all that goodness?”—this film is their story.
It whispers rather than screams, but the echo sticks with you: in a house ruled by fear of sin, the worst evil isn’t lurking in the woods.
It’s sitting at the head of the table, saying grace.
