Mother Mary: Anne Hathaway’s Striking Psychological Thriller Is Streaming

Anne Hathaway has become one of 2026’s most prominent box-office performers, appearing in a highly anticipated sequel, Christopher Nolan’s latest major production and an inventive dinosaur film. Alongside those larger releases, she also delivered a remarkably intense performance in a quieter psychological thriller.

What is Mother Mary about?

Mother Mary is the latest film from writer-director David Lowery, whose previous work includes The Green Knight and A Ghost Story. The film had a quiet theatrical release in April before arriving on HBO Max for streaming.

Hathaway plays Mary, a pop star approaching an emotional collapse just days before a major comeback concert. She leaves for London and turns up without warning at the home of Sam Anselm, played by Michaela Coel. Sam is Mary’s former costume designer, closest friend and possible former lover.

The pair have not seen each other for years, and their reunion immediately exposes unresolved hurt. Mary asks Sam to create a dress for her upcoming performance, drawing them back into the imaginative but unstable partnership that once defined their relationship.

A performance built on two versions of Mary

For much of its runtime, Mother Mary resembles an intimate stage drama. Mary and Sam trade emotionally loaded dialogue inside Sam’s vast costume workshop, while flashbacks and concert sequences periodically widen the film’s scope.

Hathaway makes Mary’s divided identity central to the performance. In front of an audience, she is a polished pop icon who conceals exhaustion and the physical cost of constant work. Away from the stage, she sustains a carefully manufactured charm through cordial but shallow relationships with employees.

Sam sees something different. Around her former creative partner, Mary’s defences fall away. She is exposed, wounded and determined to reconnect, even though Sam is not ready to lower her own barriers.

A ghost story about creative bonds

Although Lowery has made films featuring sword fights, dragons and Western gunfights, the charged relationship at the centre of Mother Mary fits his interests. Beneath its artistic drama, the film is also a ghost story.

Sam describes the last time she heard Mary’s music as an eerie yet liberating experience. She physically removed a presence that had been haunting her body. Once separated from her, the presence became a ghost, freeing Sam from the pain of being abandoned by her creative soulmate. Its story is not finished, however: the ghost moves towards Mary, where it begins to haunt and inhabit her. The film’s final act follows the attempt to exorcise it.

Lowery presents the ghost in vivid red, allowing it to shift between forms. It may appear as fabric floating in the air, a bright light hovering menacingly above a stage or a mass of flesh on the floor. The imagery remains deliberately open-ended. The ghost can seem threatening or compassionate, but neither woman can simply disregard it.

To develop the apparition’s appearance, Lowery experimented with small clay models and explored different shapes, objects and transformations. He eventually collaborated with Daniel Wurtzel, an artist known for suspending fabric in the air. That approach suited a ghost born from Sam’s grief and inner life.

Why Mother Mary is worth watching

The film repeatedly invites viewers to look beyond its literal events. One line observes that something may sound like a metaphor even when it is not, offering a useful way into a story that prefers suggestion to direct explanation.

Mother Mary explores creative partnerships, the sacrifices they require, the aftermath of a breakup and the difficult process of letting go. After seeing Hathaway in several of the year’s biggest productions, viewers can find her working in a far more intimate and unsettling register here. It may be her strongest performance of an unusually busy year.

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Where to stream Mother Mary in Australia

Mother Mary is streaming on HBO Max.