With the release of writer/director Taratoa Stappard’s debut feature, Mārama, we have seen the potential emergence of a new movement in horror.
Debuting at TIFF on September 5th last year, it became the first truly Māori-centric horror film. While previous films have touched on Māori history or been produced, written, or directed by Māori filmmakers, Mārama is the first to accomplish all three.
Going back a few decades, the first NZ horror to include our indigenous culture is The Lost Tribe from 1983, which uses the macabre true story of the Ngāti Māmoe as the backdrop for a man’s descent into madness.
Over many decades, the Ngāti Māmoe were almost completely wiped out by the far mightier Ngāi Tahu, and over the intervening centuries, stories have emerged of possible descendants living in Fiordland, fleeing at the sight of strangers.
Writer-director-producer John Laing coupled this with other mysterious disappearances in the area to form the eerie backdrop of his dark psychological study.
The Lost Tribe is an excellent horror that becomes a piercing look into what goes on under the surface of the average emotionless Kiwi bloke. However, in retrospect, it does suffer slightly from the broader issue of using another culture as a springboard for Pākehā concerns.
That said, the film is all there is for a long time thereafter, becoming little more than heavies or comedy sidekicks; Māori fade even more into the background.
The most notable exception by far is Mataku, the three-season anthology TVNZ horror created by Carey Carter and Bradford Haami. The series aired between 2002 and 2005 and brought various stories from Māori mythology to life.
With the possible exception of Marama Killen and Brad Davison’s 2007 feature, Down by the Riverside, which touches on colonialist institutional abuse, there are no real Māori-centric movies until Danny Mulheron’s 2012 splatter comedy, Fresh Meat, which sees a gang of crims on the lam, holed up in the suburban home of a Māori family who end up trying to eat them.
After that, we have What We Do in the Shadows and The Dead Lands, both 2014 releases. The Dead Lands is a bit of an outlier, genre-wise, and is ostensibly a historical action movie in the vein of Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto.
Toa Fraser’s story in The Dead Lands has James Rolleston fleeing a treacherous chieftain hellbent on stopping him from wreaking vengeance for the deaths of his kin. Your typical revenge-thriller narrative.
However, the Dead Lands of the title are bound up with demons and bloodshed, which tip it over into a very horror-inflected tale (although I say that cautiously, obviously, with respect to any readers for whom the storytelling therein is tied up in belief, faith and tradition as opposed to my English, atheist outlook).
The Dead Lands ultimately remains more of an action thriller, but it deserves mention within the small pantheon of Māori horror cinema.
What We Do in the Shadows has the distinction of being the first feature-film horror led by Māori, with both directors, Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement, of Te Whānau-ā-Apanui and Ngāti Kahungunu descent, respectively.
Their mockumentary follows a bunch of Eastern European vampires prowling the nightlife of 21st-century Wellington. Clubs, pubs and flats serving as their base of operations, the film riffs on New Zealand life more broadly, playing it off against the medievalism and uptight foppishness of the undead as they try to murder and debauch their way through their underwhelming afterlife.
What We Do in the Shadows does not overtly concern itself with Māori culture (not a criticism, obviously), but rather mines that well-worn comedy conceit of the old and confused butting up against the new and confused.
After those – again – nothing until Mārama. Some horrors have indirectly touched on issues of colonialism and racism, but strangely Mārama has become the true benchmark of Māori horror by, for and about them.
It’s an excellent film; from its gorgeous, layered opening shot, it brings a wholly new perspective to the tiresome ‘elevated’ horror genre. Stappard’s approach has no airs and graces, which is a relief given how outwardly polished and sleek a product it is.
Mārama is never ironic or askance; it doesn’t let subtext and metaphor mask a lack of horror-filmcraft. It is an angry film that knows what it wants to get across, and does so with robust candour. In so doing, hopefully, it becomes the vanguard of a new subgenre of similar films.
Academic, producer and horror fan, Ani Ngawhika points out, Mārama comes in under Barry Barclay’s theory of ‘Fourth Cinema’: indigenous cinema, separate from an established, ‘first world’ – often colonialist – gaze. In this case, Mārama actively sets itself in opposition to a history of colonialist cinema. The violence of horror cinema is turned around on Mārama’s British tormentors as her hatred boils over and she turns the tables on them.
“Māori storytelling is brutal and straight to the point”, says Ngawhika, “Pūrākau don’t leave out the gory details […] mixed with the rage of seeing all the hard work of our ancestors suddenly begin to derail due to the actions of those who already strongly benefited from our oppression – it is the perfect recipe for the emergence of modern Māori horror.”
That redress of historical injustices will inevitably play into the narratives of Māori horror, and it will be exciting to see what comes of it. There’s also the potential for extraordinary imagery of ancient myths and legends. “I grew up hearing many scary stories from elders”, Ngawhika continues, “from evil, kidnapping bird-women hybrids to stories of cruel love and murder.”
Māori mythology is filled with exciting, scary imagery: ogresses whose skin protrudes the ribs of their victims, and taniwha who can disguise themselves as anything from leering ravens to giant mountains, ready to kill unwary travellers.
Come what may, this fourth cinematic route into horror is a budding tree of terror and a red, red springtime is – fingers crossed – well on its way.
Mārama can be watched in New Zealand on Kiwi-owned and independent streaming service AroVision.
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