SPOILERS are ahead for Mother Mary, now streaming with an HBO Max subscription.
Mother Mary is sort of the perfect A24 movie. By the end you’re kind of like “What did I just watch?”, but you’re also happy just did, too. Now that it’s on streaming, I have to talk about the ending of the film that actually started Anne Hathaway’s incredible run of 2026 movies earlier this year. Let’s get into it.
When Anne Hathaway’s titular pop singer character reunites with her estranged designer, Sam (Michaela Coel), she tells her about a song. It’s called “Spooky Action” and it was written about Sam. Mother Mary tries to play it for her, but Sam refuses to hear it. So instead, she does a very intense interpretive dance of it for her. I thought the whole movie was leading up to Sam, and therefore the audience, finally enjoying the song. But, you can imagine my surprise when it is never plays!
So, naturally I had to ask writer/director David Lowery about why his decision to have “Spooky Action” remain a mystery. Here’s what he had to say:
Well, in my opinion, you do see ‘Spooky Action’, but the song that Mother Mary never sings has become a dress that Sam makes. And so, what you are seeing is the song. And, I love the idea of a song becoming an object and an object becoming a song, and vice versa. So we do witness Spooky Action at the end of the film, even if our ears aren’t quite picking it up.
Huh! Well, this is interesting. Lowery certainly made a surreal movie with Mother Mary, so I honestly shouldn’t have expected an obvious ending. The movie does conclude with the pair of women completing some sort of ritual. It results in Mother Mary pulling a fabric-like ghost out of her body, as if exorcising her body of a demon she’d been holding on to.
It’s no wonder the Mother Mary reviews called it a “fascinating chamber piece” and “a two-hander that owes as much to The Exorcist as it does to Lady Gaga” in its reviews. Leading up to it, I had read about how Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour influenced it, so I don’t think I realized what I was going to get. But, in many ways it was better than I could have imagined it.
It’s definitely the sort of movie I’m going to watch again and get even more from the next time around. But, I definitely understood how the movie is trying to communicate how art can physically manifest one’s feelings of let’s say grief, heartbreak or resentment. Throughout Mother Mary, Mary and Sam express a lot they’ve been holding on to since they stopped talking. While we may never hear the song “Spooky Action,” we kind of live it through the movie, don’t we?
So, it’s abrupt, yes. But, intentionally so thanks to Lowery’s comments to us on the ending’s meaning.