Horror Fan Exclusives!

Get closer to the horror you love. Join the Horror newsletter for the latest movie news, reviews, and interviews, plus exclusive giveaways just for our community.

Subscribe

Loading...

Thank you!

You have successfully joined our subscriber list.

The Last Thing Mary Saw is the newest addition to the modern folk horror genre. The directorial debut of Edoardo Vitaletti, this film offers a different kind of horror period piece than one would expect. 

Starring Stefanie Scott (Insidious: Chapter 3, Beautiful Boy), Isabelle Fuhrman (Orphan, The Hunger Games, The Novice) and Rory Culkin (Lords of Chaos, Scream 4), The Last Thing Mary Saw is a dark vehicle for some interesting characters fantastically portrayed. 

The Last Thing Mary Saw revolves around Mary (Scott) who is romantically attached to the housemaid, Eleanor (Fuhrman), and her family’s severe disapproval, punishing them for their indiscretions against God. The girls plan their next move as an intruder (Culkin) invades their home. 

This film just dropped on Shudder, and we got a chance to chat with the director about some of the inspiration that went into this movie, his Catholic upbringing and why this wasn’t a witch movie.

Isabelle Fuhrman in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

Bri Spieldenner: What was your inspiration for The Last Thing Mary Saw?

Edoardo Vitaletti: It was kind of like a two part process. I was doing a lot of looking into Northern European art history when I wrote it, a lot of 19th century stuff and common visual threads like funeral scenes, summer houses. Danish painter (Vilhelm) Hammershoi, who has a great series of female subjects alone reading a book in these Copenhagen 19th century homes, and I wanted to write and shoot something that carried that kind of quiet, somber, very evocative feel.

The Hammershoi painting that inspired “The Last Thing Mary Saw”

EV: So that was part of it and then the other part, more personal, was I grew up in a very religious part of the world. I mean, I’m from Italy, so it’s very Catholic and whatnot and through public school and Sunday school and Mass and everything you grow up being fed a certain vision of the world that claims to be promoting inclusivity and love for all and I don’t think that that is true, I think it is a very exclusive unfortunate philosophy that tells you you’re accepted, so long as you fit into a certain box and I wanted to expose my frustration against it. 

And again, some of the things that like I said, I’ve been kind of taught throughout my life and growing up. And I decided to observe that through a lens of identity and sexuality.

BS: That’s awesome. I really am interested in the painting aspects of your inspiration. I know exactly the type of paintings that you’re talking about and how your film is similar to me in that sense. I also grew up Catholic as well and I feel very similarly to you. So I definitely get that vibe and really appreciate that about your work. Do you feel mostly anger towards Christianity?

EV: There are phases of your life where your relationship towards the things you grew up with changes and I think me writing this was coming from a place of frustration, from a place of anger, from a place of a lot of those things. Because I do think that there is a fundamental issue of talking about religion as an inclusive kind of philosophy when instead there’s always an asterix. 

And I’ve seen a lot of people behave the way that the antagonists of my movie do. And I think that people kind of ignore how much that exists and for me, it was kind of like a way to confront that from a place of anger ‘cause for me it was about exposing the insecurity of a belief system that when challenged crumbles and uses violence to fix itself. Unfairly so of course. 

Stefanie Scott as Mary, Isabelle Fuhrman as Eleanor in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

“For me it was about exposing the insecurity of a belief system that when challenged crumbles and uses violence to fix itself”

BS: Another follow up question to that. So since your film has this dichotomy of these older characters and then these younger characters that have different beliefs, obviously, don’t subscribe to the same viewpoints. Do you feel that Christianity or religion nowadays is kind of changing? And do you think that that is kind of reflected in your work or how do you feel about that?

EV: Well, when it comes to what I experienced, coming out of Italy, at least, because that’s since I came to New York seven years ago, and I never went to church anymore. It feels nice to think and say that religion is changing. I would like to think so, I don’t entirely know that Christianity and Catholicism are quite admitting to themselves certain things that in order to grow, they have to admit. So it’s like I said even though things are changing and are progressing in the overall in the grand scheme of things, I think there’s just a sphere of otherness to which stories like that of Mary and Eleanor tend to get relegated and so it’s a yes and no I think. 

It is just always about not fully admitting the degree of violence and of making people feel like outcasts that actually does happen. And once only by admitting that I think you truly move forward. I still talk to a lot of people not from my family, thankfully, but from my town or like that who think that people in same sex relationships should not get married or should not have children or should not be themselves in public. So, I don’t know. I don’t know that it’s going as fast as it should. I’m confident that it’s not changing as fast, as rapidly as it should.

Stefanie Scott and Isabelle Fuhrman in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

BS: On the subject of the queer relationship. What I really appreciated about your film is that it depicts a very unique view of a queer relationship. You don’t see how they started this relationship. The whole point is their family doesn’t like them, but I still feel like the whole time they’re like, we’re still showing our relationship out in the open, we don’t really care, we’re just living our lives. 

So did you come at that with a specific viewpoint? Or did you do that on purpose or what was your inspiration for that?

EV: It was purposeful in the sense that I wasn’t interested in telling a story where at any point the two main characters felt like they had to question what they were doing. I never wanted them to go back and question the steps that they were taking towards being free or towards being together. 

Because like I said, I think that my angle was to show what this kind of staunch and ridiculously monolithic belief system, what happens to it when it starts to crumble because they torture them and they commit violence, and they outcast them, but they never back down. They suffer and they cry, but there’s never a point where they’re like, okay, maybe this is not such a good idea to be together. At worst they talk about being careful for a couple of days after the first correction or something but that was always my angle because I think it is just about that. 

I just didn’t want them to be characters who come to question their relationship because I don’t think I ever watched a movie about two straight characters who feel like there is a point in the story where they are going to have to question why they are together. That just doesn’t happen with two straight characters and we as an audience, don’t expect that to happen. And I don’t see why I should expect that from a queer relationship, even in a world that is telling them don’t be together. So that was my angle.

Stefanie Scott and Isabelle Fuhrman in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

BS: I feel like especially with that, and with the setting of the film, it reminds me of a lot of witchcraft movies, but they’re never called witches and never really directly insinuated other than perhaps the grandmother and what she’s doing but did you want to make this a witch movie or did you purposefully choose not to do that?

EV: I purposely didn’t want to mention that, because in my looking at the history of accusations of witchcraft, it is part of a culture of patriarchy, trying to oppress women. It’s just in the 1600s they were called witches and then in the 1800s, that kind of started to go away a little bit. And in modern days, there are different ways in which a woman who just lives her life is called just to be relegated to a sphere of otherness. 

So to me the term “witch” it kind of changes throughout the centuries and it maybe doesn’t get mentioned at some point, or it does at others, but it is just the same thing all the time. I mean, it’s not about witchcraft. It is about imposing a culture of “you don’t get to speak. You don’t get to stand up for yourself. You don’t get to exist.” 

And so, it is the same, the way that it is expressed at a time where burning someone at the stake was legal, is that in the world that we live today is different. And so I didn’t feel like I even actually needed to mention witchcraft, because it’s just always the same thing. 

Like it wasn’t even witchcraft when it was witchcraft. It was just a cultural attempt to relegate women to a sphere of otherness of being silenced. There weren’t a lot of men being accused of witchcraft. So that does say something.

Stefanie Scott in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

“it wasn’t even witchcraft when it was witchcraft. It was just a cultural attempt to relegate women to a sphere of otherness of being silenced”

BS: I definitely agree with your viewpoint there. So one question that I have about this film is what’s going on with the book in it? Is that book real, and why did you choose to have this film revolve around this book?

EV: I wanted to have this little piece of literature that is this object that presents itself to you both as a friend at a certain time and as an enemy. At the same time, though, the two girls read the stories together in their moments of intimacy, of quiet, and they enjoy reading them. There is a story that as far as the imagery they feel like it’s talking about them, so it feels like they’re finding themselves in it. And that was one of my goals. 

But then the idea was that book to turn into an enemy when at the end you realize that it is the ultimate curse and what happens to Mary has been written in it before. When you read an official Christian piece of literature, when you read the Bible, a lot of times Christianity talks about the devil being the enemy and doing the evil things, but then you read the Bible, and there’s God throwing flames and floods and things at people and it’s like, who’s the real evil, who is committing the real evils. 

And I think this book is what is the difference between pagan, Devil-like literature, and when the Bible tells you that God killed people because they were doing things, and so it’s kind of this hybrid that walks this line and floats a little bit back and forth. Because to me, there is no distinction sometimes for those who don’t believe in the Bible for those who don’t believe in Catholicism or Christianity, as a whole, it is folklore. It is paganism. 

And they’re taking it as such, and then it comes back to hurt you. It’s like this two-faced enemy that never quite reveals his true nature. And I think that is a little bit of my relationship with Christianity.

Rory Culkin in “The Last Thing Mary Saw” – Photo Credit: Shudder

BS: That’s very interesting. So the book in your opinion is kind of like a stand-in for the Bible?

EV: To some degree, yes, it is, at the same time something that the girls think is their friend because they like to read it together. But then the matriarchal character ends up using his or her Bible, she’s protecting this invisible system that wasn’t mandated by the devil, in my opinion was mandated by God. And so who’s got it? What’s the difference? If they both had been proven to do horrible things to people?

BS: What message would you like an audience to take away from your film?

EV: I don’t know, just sort of question the difference between good and evil. And as far as good is a nice label that some things get to have next to their name. But what is the difference between the good God and what he does versus the devil and what they do, that’s the part that has always been a little frustrating to me. So I guess it’s just to question that labeling. I would say.

Photo Credit: Shudder

“Question the difference between good and evil… question that labeling”

BS: That’s a good message for the modern day I feel. Since you are Italian, do you feel that you have any Italian influence in this film?

EV: I don’t know. I feel like what’s the difference between being Italian and being Catholic? But that is a big part of it, I think. Mostly that I don’t know. I’ve directed one short film here that was in Italian. And that was about as far as my Italian directing experience went. 

But I would say the sort of cultural weight of growing up religious, which is something you don’t ever question when you’re in it, and then you step out of it. And it’s like, oh, wait, hold on a second. Why was I dipped in holy water when I was six months old, why did nobody ask me to do that? So I would say that yeah, it’s a little bit unfortunate, but I guess that’s what it is. 

But I love Italian cinema. There are a lot of great Italian movies that I love and I love my culture as far as literature and the people and everything. So this is a phase of frustration when it comes to thinking about my life back home, but hopefully more colorful influences will come about for sure.

BS: Awesome. Do you have anything new in the works?

EV: Something that I’ve been writing, working on another kind of movie in the same vein, another period piece. I can’t necessarily share too much about it now, but hopefully soon. So yeah, something in a similar field.

You can watch The Last Thing Mary Saw on Shudder.