Hail Mary

Magic realism is a literary genre that’s been ill served by cinema to date; the failure of films like House of the Spirits suggested that mixing a realistic commentary on today’s world with fantastic, mystical or surreal elements isn’t something that works as well on the big screen as it does on the printed page. Yet it could be argued that many of today’s superhero or fantasy franchises do incorporate magic realist elements; Rosemary Rodriguez’s religious thriller blends today’s hot-topic issues (women’s rights, immigration, border control) with some updated biblical elements to often engrossing effect.

“I came from the soil,’ announces Baal (Jack Huston) as he unfolds himself to his next potential victim; he’s on a mission through Mexico to catch up with our protagonist Maria (Natalia del Riego) as she seeks to escape to the USA with her unborn child. This is obviously a re-telling, but not a parody, of one of the most familiar Bible stories; together with carpenter Jose (Benny Emmanuel), Maria is hoping to escape from the deadly Herod plague which renders new-born babies dead in Mexico on arrival; Jose leads her towards a secret tunnel built by criminals which might just save Maria, but Baal is never far behind…

Hail Maria does offer the kind of societal commentary that distinguished Godard’s Je vous salue, Marie, but it also taps into the commercial impulses that have driven Stephen King and Clive Barker to delve into the realm of magic realism, or even the symbolism of Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita; stranger things have happened by the Patriarch’s Ponds. ‘Some farm girl from Central America isn’t going to give birth to the saviour of the world,’ Maria reasons with self-deprecating intent, but Hail Mary makes a case why today’s circumstances might be just right for that event; Rodriguez’s film follows events ‘from the black market to the farmer’s market’ to throw fresh light on issues connected to child separation. Under signs reading ‘No asylum in the US’, Maria agonises about her responsibility as Baal closes in. ‘Do you have any history of disease in your family?,’ Baal casually asks his soon-to-be victims, before demurring ‘My creator is more understanding than yours.’ Playing a demon in human form is a tall order, but Huston, previously the scene-stealing lawyer in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, makes something wonderfully saturnine and sinister from his relentless pursuer, a Terminator freshly armed with scripture and a global warming T-Shirt.

From a script by Knate Lee, and with model Angela Sarafyan memorably cast as an angelic helper, Hail Mary is a metaphorical thriller rather than a horror movie, although the atmosphere is appropriately dark and violent. The presence of Keanu Reeves amongst the producers here connects Hail Mary to the quasi-religious fantasy worlds depicted in Constantine or even The Matrix; the world may well feel like it’s going to hell right now, so an updated Bible story should have its place, even if it’s just a provocation to create discussion. Hail Mary is a thoughtful, uniformly well-acted and daringly conceived film that works its way to a significant twist or punch-line; while it makes something disturbing and compelling in its depiction of evil, this film is also full of grace and concern for the plight of those of us who live on planet earth.

Hail Mary just screened at SXSW 2023, there’s no trailer as yet, but I’ll post trailers and clips as they emerge. Until then, here’s the cast talking about the film.

https://schedule.sxsw.com/2023/films/2082422