Marrowbone is a deeply psychological horror movie that considers heavy ideas of memory and loneliness all explained through a careful metaphor that director Sergio G. Sánchez inlays throughout his film. A 2017 English-language Spanish psychological horror, Marrowbone stars an incredible cast including pre-mega-fame Anya Taylor-Joy and Mia Goth, as well as George MacKay and Charlie Heaton. The film was received fairly lukewarmly, with a 49% on Rotten Tomatoes. What it lacks in emotional depth of its characters and originality it makes up for with its cast, atmosphere, and moving story.
The film is set in 1968 and follows the Fairbairn family. Led by matriarch Rose (Nicola Harrison), the four Fairbairn children move from England to Rose’s childhood home in Maine, called the Marrowbone Residence, which they all take as a surname, forgoing their unremarked upon father’s name. Rose dies just a few months later leaving the eldest son, Jack (MacKay), to take care of his siblings, tend to a romance with a local girl, Allie (Taylor-Joy), and explore the dark secrets locked somewhere inside the Marrowbone Residence, secrets that could change his life forever.
Marrowbone Uses A Haunted House To Mirror The Character’s Mental State
The House In Marrowbone Reflects The Roiling Fears And Hopes For Those Who Live There
A haunted house horror movie is not exactly an original conceit. Since as early as 1959 with House on Haunted Hill, haunted houses have been a staple of the genre. The home is an excellent location for any horror movie. It’s a point of safety and warmth at its best. At its worst, it represents pain, loneliness, and isolation. It can be all those things at once, mixing the bitter memories with the good, and even those with fond memories of their childhood houses probably recall nights when they looked up their attic stairs, unsure of what was above.
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Spanish director Sergio G. Sánchez puts the house at the center of Marrowbone to good use in his psychological horror film. Ostensibly, the mansion is a place of safety and retreat. The Marrowbone family arrives from England, and it’s implied that an ugliness with their absentee father and husband is what drove them from the British Isles. In that way, the imposing mansion is a castle, standing tall and strong against whatever is thrown against the family. It’s a sanctuary, and throughout the film, it does feel like that.
However, a sanctuary can also be a prison, and there are times that Sánchez puts forth the notion that by being accepted into the walls of Marrowbone, Rose and her children are relinquishing control of their lives to it. Houses may offer protection, but they also absorb the memories, histories, and emotions of those who reside in them, at least in terms of film parlance. The Marrowbone Residence is no different. There is a deep pain within the Marrowbone family, one not revealed until the horror movie’s twist partway through.
By doing that, Marrowbone itself becomes infected, twisting and contorting, imbued with something unrecognizable and un-understandable.
The Marrowbone children can sense it. They refer to this unpleasantness as a ghost, a tangible box for children to cram fears, anxieties, and bad memories into. However, the ghosts in Marrowbone aren’t just a fantasy for children in the movie. Jack has gone to great pains to cover up mirrors in the house. Mirrors are symbols of duality, reflection, and self-understanding. By hiding these mirrors, Jack and his siblings hide their fears. By doing that, Marrowbone itself becomes infected, twisting and contorting, imbued with something unrecognizable and un-understandable.
The Real Meaning Of Marrowbone’s Ending
Jack Must Come To Terms With His Trauma To Survive
As Marrowbone winds towards its conclusion, the twist of the story is revealed that changes how everyone, the viewers and the characters, see the first part of the film. When the town lawyer, Tom Porter (Kyle Soller), blackmails Jack for his family’s money to become a partner at an NYC firm, Jack’s siblings decide they need to help their brother. They ask to meet with Allie in secret to tell her something she must hear. Allie comes to the meeting spot only to find it deserted. Instead, she finds a diary, presumably written by the Marrowbone siblings.
In it, she learns that Simon Fairbairn (Tom Fisher), the Marrowbone’s convicted serial killer father, had actually returned after discovering the Residence soon after they moved in. To protect his siblings, Jack locked them in the Residence’s attic, which had been boarded up all film, and went to confront his father. Simon, desperate for the money his family “stole” from him, knocks Jack unconscious, returns to the Marrowbone Residence, and murders Jack’s four siblings.
Jack sealed his living father and his siblings’ corpses inside the attics and developed multiple personalities to help deal with his trauma.
Jack sealed his living father and his siblings’ corpses inside the attics and developed multiple personalities to help deal with his trauma. These personalities are who the audience has been seeing on screen and are the reason why Allie has never met any of Jack’s siblings. Jack covered the mirrors in his home so as not to snap himself out of the delusion he preferred to live in. Allie wakes Jack up to it, but when she’s attacked by a still-living Simon, Jack allows his Billy (Heaton) personality to come out, and he kills Simon.
Later, Jack is released to Allie from psychiatric care. The doctors tell her to make sure he stays on medicine, but she silently refuses, understanding Jack is happier believing his siblings are still alive. This revelation changes the first half of the film and the importance of the house in it. Jack has sealed his memories inside Marrowbone, in one case literally, and he refuses to look at them, symbolized by the covering of the mirrors.
Keeping everything bottled up in his head has led to as much pain as keeping Simon bottled up in his home.
Jack’s mental break is reflected in his home. When Allie figures out what’s happening, Tom tears apart the bricked-up attic, mirroring Jack’s mental state with his home’s physical state. In both cases, however, it’s a necessary release of memory and pain. Keeping everything bottled up in his head has led to as much pain as keeping Simon bottled up in his home. Allie’s critical function in Marrowbone is helping Jack realize his pain and delusion while also determining when it’s healthy for him to forget some memories.
Director Sergio G. Sánchez Considers Marrowbone A Love Story
Love Is What Saves Jack From Himself
Despite the murders, ghosts, and delusions, director Sergio G. Sánchez considers Marrowbone to be a romance more than anything (via DailyDead),
“But at the core of it all, Marrowbone is a love story. Not only romantic love, but it’s a story about the ties that bind us together that cannot be broken, and how love is attuned to overcome even the most horrific things that may happen to us. I felt like this story needed love to balance against everything else that happens.”
Marrowbone is a love story. It’s a love story between Jack and Allie. Like many blossoming loves, the pair doesn’t understand each other right away, though the reason behind this disconnect is more sinister than either one of them realizes. No matter the sadness that surrounds Jack’s life, Allie is there for him, willing to work through his grief and trauma to get to know the person underneath.
At the same time, Marrowbone is about sibling love. It’s love so strong that Jack can not face the fact that they all died, and instead creates his own reality. As Sánchez says (via ScreenAnarchy),
“[It’s] Not only a romantic love story, but also fraternal love, the love between siblings that cannot be broken.”
It’s notable that even in Jack’s mind and memory of his siblings, they are loving enough to realize that, as figments of imagination, they need to help their brother overcome their deaths. There are multiple layers of delusion and memory there. Jack not only remembers his siblings fondly, but they are so real that they can, in a way, even contemplate their own non-existence. Marrowbone explains loneliness, sadness, and mental crisis by way of being haunted by one’s surroundings, and it also makes the critical point that love is necessary for someone to understand their trauma.
Marrowbone follows four siblings who, after the death of their mother, hide from the outside world in their decaying family estate. Directed by Sergio G. Sánchez, the film features George MacKay, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Charlie Heaton. The story intertwines suspense and family bonds as the siblings contend with a sinister presence within the house.
- Director
- Sergio G. Sánchez
- Release Date
- October 27, 2017
- Runtime
- 111 Minutes
- Budget
- 8000000.0