The Secret of Marrowbone
3 stars
Director: Sergio G. Sánchez
Stars: George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton
Duration: 110 mins
Class: 15
KRS Releasing Ltd

Rose and her four children Jack (George MacKay), Jane (Mia Goth), Billy (Charlie Heaton) and Sam (Matthew Stagg) flee England and a horrible past to the safety of a seaside town in Maine, the United States.

Yet, Rose falls ill and, as she lies on her deathbed, she makes Jack promise to keep her death a secret until he is 21, when he will be legally in a position to care for his three siblings.

And so, once she dies, the children settle into their rambling home, a spot isolated from the rest of the community; and yet it is not long before that which they had fled comes back to haunt them.

First-time director Sergio G Sánchez, who works off his own script, is the man behind the screenplays for 2007’s haunting The Orphanage and 2012’s stirring The Impossible; the one a psychological horror film, the other a drama centred on the 2004 tsunami. Both films contained powerful storylines which feature well-defined characters whose emotional journeys resonated with the audience. And, while here Sanchez’s feeling for story and character remain pretty solid, he does not yet seem to have the steady hand his compatriot (and director of the two afore-mentioned films) J A Bayona lent to those films.

The Secret of Marrowbone is not quite sure whether it is a psychological thriller; a ghost story or a coming-of-age tale. Well, it’s all of those; yet, they do not come together into a cohesive whole.

The story itself starts promisingly enough with an opening scene which ends on quite a cliff-hanger as the story then jumps to six months later, with the four siblings living in something akin to harmony.

Jack heads out to town every so often to get supplies and – unbeknown to the rest of the family – to meet local girl Allie (Anya Taylor Joy) with whom he has embarked on a relationship. The bulk of the mystery hinges on what happened during those six months and that curiosity lingers throughout. The problem is that Sanchez does build up some nice moments of tension which, however, never quite give the chilling payoff they promise.

Powerful storylines featuring well-defined characters

Moreover, the symphony of agitated strings that underscores the film is oftentimes way too intrusive. And, most crucially, a twist which on the one hand does come as a complete surprise is on the other one too clumsily and hastily handled, stripping it of any powerful impact or the emotional resonance it should have.

That said, Sanchez and his team go a long way in creating an atmospheric, mysterious and other-worldly setting and the Marrowbone house is very much a character in the film. It is large and rambling, with myriad nooks and crannies, a boarded-up attic,  with large mirrors covered by sheets. The whole house is surrounded by an overgrown garden; it’s a house that keeps strangers away behind its tall iron gates.

Moreover, the characters are so sympathetically drawn, the ensemble cast imbuing them with such wide-eyed innocence and fear, that it is then difficult not to engage with them.

Mackay’s Jack, especially, projects the enormous weight of responsibility put upon him; a young man torn between wanting to do right by his late, troubled mother and the desire to lead a normal life.

Goth’s Jane tries her best to keep house and take care of her brothers, notwithstanding the terror that is brimming beneath the surface. Heaton’s Billy tries to be the heroic one; yet, his immaturity tends to get in the way. Taylor-Joy is a sympathetic Allie, a link to the normality that Jack so obviously craves, while Kyle Soller is the young attorney who begins to suspect all is not quite as it seems. His investigations into the Marrowbone household become more intense, given his jealousy of the burgeoning relationship between Jack and Allie.