Which Mother Mary Character Are You?

Learn More About Mother Mary

Mother Mary arrived from A24 in April 2026 as one of the year's most stylistically daring releases, a film that director David Lowery has described as a deliberate collision between pop concert spectacle and gothic horror. Written and directed by Lowery, best known for genre-bending work like The Green Knight and A Ghost Story, the film stars Anne Hathaway as the title character, a world-famous pop icon preparing for a high-stakes comeback performance in the wake of an onstage accident that some suspect may not have been an accident at all.

Overwhelmed during a costume fitting ahead of the show, Mary flees to the English countryside to track down Sam Anselm, played by Michaela Coel, her estranged former collaborator and the fashion designer who helped build her entire public image years earlier. Sam is furious, still nursing resentment over being denied credit and cut out of Mary's inner circle after their partnership dissolved, but with just three days before the performance, she grudgingly agrees to design one final dress.

What unfolds inside Sam's barn-turned-workshop is less a straightforward drama and more a slow-building psychological horror story. As old wounds resurface, both women reveal they've separately been haunted by the same ghostly figure, a spectral presence made of red cloth that first appeared to Sam after a violent altercation years earlier, and later to Mary during a séance gone wrong, orchestrated in part by an obsessive fan named Imogen, played by FKA Twigs. The film builds toward a ritualistic, almost exorcism-like climax as Sam helps Mary confront the literal and figurative ghost she's been carrying since her accident.

Lowery has been open about the real-world inspirations behind Mother Mary's title character, citing Taylor Swift as an influence on the film's visual direction and framing, and revealing that he pictured "Taylor Swift in ten or fifteen years" while shaping who Mary could become. Hathaway, for her part, has said she drew heavily from Beyoncé's vocal technique and stage presence, particularly her Cowboy Carter track "American Requiem" and the concert film Homecoming, to find her character's sense of stillness and command.

The supporting cast rounds out Mary's inner circle and rivals: Hunter Schafer plays Hilda, Sam's loyal assistant who narrates much of the film's climactic performance; Sian Clifford plays Jade, a watchful member of Mary's team; and the ensemble also includes Kaia Gerber, Jessica Brown Findlay, and Alba Baptista in supporting roles. The film's soundtrack, Mother Mary: Greatest Hits, features original songs written by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs, all performed by Hathaway herself, giving the film a genuinely functioning pop discography to go along with its fictional pop stardom.

Critical reception has been split but passionate. Rotten Tomatoes logged a 70% approval rating with critics calling it "modish" and stylish even when "frustratingly obtuse," while others found its ambition undercut by its own self-seriousness. Regardless of where critics landed, Mother Mary has become one of 2026's most discussed A24 releases, largely on the strength of Hathaway and Coel's performances and the film's willingness to let a pop-stardom drama tip fully into horror territory.

This quiz is your chance to find out which half of that haunted friendship, or which member of Mary's orbit, you'd be if the ghost came for you next.