Marrowbone (2017)

Marrowbone (2017)

Marrowbone movie storyline. In the late 60’s, Ms. Marrowbone travels from England to the Maine with her children Jack, Billy, Jane and Sam to flee from her evil husband. The siblings befriend the youth local librarian Allie, who lives in a nearby farm, and have a wonderful summer together. But soon their mother that is ill becomes terminal and asks their siblings to promise to stay in the house together until Jack is twenty-one and becomes capable to assume the family.

She dies and they bury her in the property, while Jack and Allie fall in love with each other. Jack hides the death of his mother from the locals, and when the lawyer Porter requests her signature to transfer the real estate to her name, Jane forges her signature, but they need to pay a two-hundred-dollar tax. They are moneyless and Jack is forced to use the dirty money from his father that they had thrown away in a cave. But soon their evil father appears in the real estate and Jack hides his siblings in the attic. Soon a ghost terrifies the siblings, and all the mirrors are covered or hidden by Jack. What is the secret of the Marrobone manor?

Marrowbone (Spanish: El Secreto de Marrowbone, lit. ’The Secret of Marrowbone’) is a 2017 English-language Spanish psychological horror mystery drama film written and directed by Sergio G. Sánchez, and starring George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth, and Matthew Stagg. Marrowbone was screened in the Special Presentations section at the 2017 Toronto International Film Festival and released in Spain on 27 October 2017 by Universal Pictures.

Film Review for Marrowbone

It’s rare to get such a strong taste of turkey with Christmas so far off – unusual to get that piercing tang of cranberry sauce without a double-issue of the Radio Times to hand. This distinctively terrible film is a hideous hotchpotch of shouty overacting and muddled storytelling, unable to make up its mind if it’s a family drama, a supernatural chiller or a psychological mystery.

It’s got plot holes the diameter of the planet Jupiter and is abjectly reliant on narrative elements which have to be initially withheld under cover of a clunking “six months later” transition, and then disclosed in laborious flashbacks assisted by the discovery of a deeply ridiculous diary accessorised with sensitive line drawings.

The director is the Spanish film-maker Sergio G Sánchez, who wrote JA Bayona’s The Orphanage and the Thai tsunami drama The Impossible. These were both substantial pieces of work, but The Secret of Marrowbone is baffling and absurd and Sánchez’s grasp of English-language idioms is uncertain to say the least. An apparently British newspaper front page refers to fifty thousand pounds as “50,000£”.

George Mackay plays Jack, an English boy who shows up with his three siblings and ailing mother in late 60s America; they are evidently in flight from the abusive dad about whom much implausibly presented stuff will be revealed later. Jack is in love with a local librarian Allie (Anya Taylor-Joy), who is being menacingly courted by a creepy local lawyer, Porter (Kyle Soller), who suspects that something is amiss with Jack’s mother’s estate.

And all the time Jack’s family are terrified that the evil dad will somehow show up to terrorise them. But is that the dad for real, or his ghost? Who can tell? Or care?

Marrowbone Movie Poster (2017)

Marrowbone (2017)

El Secreto de Marrowbone

Directed by: Sergio G. Sánchez
Starring: George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Mia Goth, Matthew Stagg, Kyle Soller, Nicola Harrison, Tom Fisher, Myra Kathryn Pearse, Paul Jesson, Robert Nairne, Laura Brook
Screenplay by: Sergio G. Sánchez
Production Design by: Patrick Salvador
Cinematography by: Patrick Salvador
Film Editing by: Elena Ruiz
Costume Design by: Sonia Grande
Art Direction by: Jaime Anduiza
Music by: Fernando Velázquez
MPAA Rating: R for some violence.
Distributed by: Universal Pictures
Release Date: September 11, 2017 (TIFF), October 27, 2017 (Spain)

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