Anne Hathaway’s A24 Box Office Flop Finds Redemption on Streaming
A psychological drama and supernatural ghost story collide in this experimental thriller
Anne Hathaway is having an absolutely killer 2026. She returned to fashion’s most cutthroat workplace alongside Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada 2, starred in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, went into erotic thriller territory with Verity, and led the dinosaur thriller The End of Oak Street. It’s a blockbuster-heavy lineup for one of Hollywood’s all-time great leading women.
But one of Hathaway’s most intriguing performances this year came in a much stranger, more challenging movie that didn’t exactly set the box office on fire. Now, the A24 film is finding a new audience on streaming, giving viewers another reason to trust Hathaway’s impeccable 2026 track record.
Mother Mary, director David Lowery’s unconventional psychological thriller, is climbing the HBO Max movie charts after its theatrical run failed to generate much commercial momentum. According to FlixPatrol, the film is among the platform’s top-performing movies, suggesting audiences are finally giving this offbeat project a chance.
What is Mother Mary about?
Starring Hathaway as a troubled pop superstar, Mother Mary blends psychological drama, supernatural horror, and an exploration of the complicated relationships behind artistic success. It’s a considerably stranger proposition than Hathaway’s more mainstream releases, but that’s precisely what makes it worth a look.
The film follows Mother Mary, a globally famous singer on the verge of a comeback performance. Struggling with an emotional crisis, she turns to her former best friend and costume designer Sam Anselm, played by Michaela Coel (I May Destroy You, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever), her former best friend and costume designer, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Mary needs a new dress for her return to the stage, but their reunion quickly becomes a reckoning with the painful history of their creative partnership.
As the two women confront their unresolved feelings, the film takes an increasingly supernatural turn. A mysterious, ghostly presence haunts them both, manifesting as a writhing mass of red fabric. What begins as an intimate confrontation between estranged collaborators gradually becomes something resembling an exorcism.
The supporting cast includes Hunter Schafer (Euphoria, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes), model Kaia Gerber (Bottoms), Jessica Brown Findlay (Downton Abbey, Brave New World), and FKA twigs (The Crow, Honey Boy). Director David Lowery brings the same atmospheric, unconventional filmmaking that distinguished his earlier work, including A Ghost Story and The Green Knight.
While Mother Mary divided audiences with its unconventional approach, it holds a 69% critics’ score and 60% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, making it a more highly-rated experiment than its disappointing box office suggests.