Rent Mara (2012)

Spoilers follow ... - Mara review by NP

Mara – according to Nordic mythology is a supernatural, female creature who haunts you at night and causes bad dreams.

Jenny is being interviewed by the police in a darkened room. In flashback, she tells us how she sees the sees the spirit of her mother, but that’s impossible, because her mother has been institutionalised for years after chronic post-natal depression. However, Jenny learns she has actually been released two years earlier, which seems to validate her sightings of the woman who had abused her as a child.

The flashbacks continue. She is at a party with her cousin and some friends, at her mother’s house. Jakob and Stina seem to be getting close and Jenny doesn’t like it. After more images of her mother appear, Jenny at last gets some sleep. When she wakes, everybody has gone. It is tempting to speculate that they left her because of her moody nature, but the truth is much worse. After an age of Jenny thinking she hears and sees ghostly images, she finds her friends stabbed to death. Her mother appears to be descending the stairs, bloody knife in hand. Jenny runs outside, blood staining her clothes and ample bosom. The police arrive and tell her to ‘drop the knife’. Looking at her hand, she is shocked to see she is holding the stained kitchen knife.

At this point, I was fairly disappointed in the resolution – neurotic girl imagines spectres are killing people, and we are left unsure whether or not it’s all in her mind. I was hasty.

Back to the interrogation. Jenny has told the police all she knows – and is then told her friends are alive and well. Confused, perhaps, but unharmed. So, the inspector reiterates, where did all the blood comes from? Jenny looks to the camera, and we see an image of her mother – dead and bloody, lying in a wood.

Too long is spent going through the rigmarole of seeing things that turn out not to be there again and again, but that notwithstanding, this is a very enjoyable low budget gore-thriller.