Marrowbone

Marrowbone is a 2017 movie described as the story of 4 children who relocated from "one end of the ocean to another" with their mother back to her childhood home.  There the family is faced with a sinister presence in the home.

As like many other movies where there is a large house - old and too large with too many rooms for its current occupants who can no longer finance the upkeep of the once grand manor, Marrowbone hinted that it was a supernatural-horror movie.  And it did give that idea, when the youngest child was spooked by a large mirror at the top of the stairs.

The large mirror did play quite a crucial role in Marrowbone, and the twist in the story was a little surprising for me, as I was expecting a bump-in-the-night kind of movie, instead of what Marrowbone actually is - a description of a young man suffering from dissociative identity disorder arising from a traumatic incident.

The pace of Marrowbone was rather slow and the colours rendered rather dark, hinting at the despair of the situation.  The director of Marrowbone is Spanish.  I suppose that explains why I had the feeling that the movie was more European in nature than American, without overt displays of blood and gore.

I am not familiar with the cast of Marrowbone, save for Anya Taylor-Joy - who acted alongside James McAvoy in the 2016 Split - also a movie about a man with dissociative identity disorder.  Why Anya Taylor-Joy decided to take up 2 projects with rather similar themes is quite puzzling to me.  Though I must say that the decision taken by Anya's character in Marrowbone for Jack does give food for thought.