Fantasia Fest 2021: ‘The Last Thing Mary Saw’ depicts tragic queer love story

Witch-hunts were nothing more than condemnation of the other. Anyone who was different, or even a little peculiar, were vilified and frequently hanged or burned at the stake. The deep probing into the psyche of accused witches has long been a staple in cinema — from 1922’s Häxan to the 1996 film The Crucible, an adaptation of Author Miller’s 1953 stage play, and more recently Robert Eggers’ The Witch and Fear Street: 1666. Playing this year’s Fantasia Fest, The Last Thing Mary Saw, written and directed by Edoardo Vitaletti, further adds to the witchy lexicon, analyzing a queer love story and how, once again, the marginalized are brutally punished for being themselves.

“All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God,” reads the film’s intertitle. The text serves as a tenant of Calvinism, a branch of Protestant belief forged by Reformation theologian John Calvin. It’s the bedrock of the entire sequence of events that follow, detailing the tragedy surrounding a young girl named Mary (Stefanie Scott) and her affair with housemaid Eleanor (Isabelle Fuhrman). Set in the rustic village of Southold, New York, lying due West of Shelter Island, in 1843, the film opens in reverse, first depicting the interrogation of a blood-soaked Mary by the constable and his men. On the charge of witchcraft, she is physically, emotionally, and spiritually tested; as we see Mary in the present, her eyes ooze blood from beneath a ratty makeshift blindfold. But her demeanor remains even-keeled and stern, as what she’s already endured has been perhaps the worst she’ll ever see.

We return to the midnight inquisition intermittently throughout the film, seeing past events unravel as she describes them in real time. It is the dead of winter in which our devastating tale takes place, and Vitaletti invites the viewer directly into the downfall of two queer women, who simply paid the heaviest price for their love. Mary’s parents Agnes (Carolyn McCormick) and Randolph (Michael Laurence) seek guidance from community matriarch (Judith Roberts) and “ask for your intervention, Mother,” Anges pleads, accusing their daughter of contaminating their servant. She then suggests her brother Eustace (Tommy Buck) to employ Eleanor in his home, as a way to separate the two so-called vagrants. He’s reluctant at first and advises “correction is needed before we move her.”

Mary and Eleanor are forced to their knees, kneeling upon a bed of rice, to repent of their sins at the altar and eradicate the evil they harbor in their hearts. It’s a slow, torturous, and cruel punishment, often lasting for hours and hours at a time. Despite such vicious discipline, their tangled love for one another runs wild, and they even go as far as to bribe the local guard with bread so they can sneak off for nighttime rendezvouses in the hen house. Their intimacy is warm and nurturing, as they share bits of their favorite passages and generally bask in the glow of company. These fleeting moments make the finale all the more heartbreaking.

Their trysts are soon found out, naturally, and they must pay through further “corrections,” even if Randolph frets over whether they’ve crossed moral lines with such barbaric chastisement. The Matriarch expresses a particular relish in the punishment, hinting at something far more sinister beneath the surface, and she remains merciless in her devilish hunger to teach Mary and Eleanor a lesson. Amidst these trials, The Matriarch mysteriously falls ill and dies, leaving the family in further ruin. On the day of the funeral, they take a vow of literal silence in order to observe and grieve. This added story element douses the film with a whole other layer of tension; as Mary and Eleanor continue sharing glances, Randolph and Agnes can only smother in their sick disdain.

The Last Thing Mary Saw might read as “bury your gays,” and that would be a fair criticism. As with Fear Street: 1666, still burning hot on my mind, it’s violently emotional and gut-wrenching. Edoardo Vitaletti’s film, which likely will be quite polarizing, is an apt display of the worst humanity has to offer. It’s artistic and provocative, suggesting that mankind as we know it hasn’t changed all that much since the dawn of civilization. There’s both an adherence to genre expectation and upheaval of convention — and several third act twists are more than satisfying.

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