Anne Hathaway has cinema talking again, and not everyone is on the same page. Her new A24 pop psychodrama “Mother Mary” hit wide theaters on April 24, 2026, and it is dividing audiences faster than any release of the year. Some call it a future cult classic. Others walk out puzzled. Either way, no one is staying quiet.

Why ‘Mother Mary’ Is Splitting Audiences Down the Middle

Director David Lowery has built a strange, glittery beast. The film follows a Lady Gaga style superstar who reunites with her estranged costume designer on the eve of a major comeback. Then it slides into ghost story territory.

The reaction has been all over the map. On Rotten Tomatoes, 71% of 174 critics’ reviews are positive, with a consensus that Hathaway acquits herself well as a believable pop star in a modish psychodrama that can be frustratingly obtuse but has style to spare, while Metacritic assigned a 58 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating mixed or average reviews.

Box office results stung A24. The film opened in limited release in the United States on April 17, 2026, before going wide on April 24, and it was a box office disappointment, grossing only $3 million against its $20 million budget.

Still, the chatter online has not slowed. Film Twitter, Letterboxd and Reddit threads keep debating whether the back half is brilliant or broken.

Anne Hathaway Mother Mary A24 pop star film

Anne Hathaway Goes Full Pop Star Mode

Hathaway is the engine of this movie. She sings every track herself, and she does not hold back.

Hathaway really threw herself into the role, learning to dance like a pop star and doing all of her own singing, while Lowery employed Charli xcx, FKA twigs, and producer Jack Antonoff to build the fictional song catalog for Mother Mary.

The star has been open about where she pulled her energy from. At a press conference held in April 2026, Hathaway revealed that she had drawn inspiration from Beyoncé for her character, citing the track “American Requiem” from “Cowboy Carter” as the key to understanding how to perform her character, and she also drew inspiration from Beyoncé’s concert film and live album “Homecoming.”

Critics noticed one sequence above all. She gets to shine in what is arguably the most memorable sequence in the film, as Mother Mary does the dance routine for her new dress with no music, hurling herself across wood floors in what becomes closer to how demonic possession is captured on film, with the sounds of her grunts and limbs hitting the floor amplifying the idea that pop stars hide pain behind thumping beats and flashing lights.

“These metaphors are exhausting.” The line, spoken by Hathaway’s title character, has already become a meme among fans of the film.

Michaela Coel and the Heart of the Story

If Hathaway is the spectacle, Michaela Coel is the soul. Her fashion designer Sam Anselm is the emotional anchor of every quiet scene.

Coel can shift mesmerizingly from a warm smile to an embittered frown, and she reportedly was involved in the process from a screenwriting phase before being cast.

The setup is painfully human. Hathaway plays a pop icon at the end of her rope when she knocks out of the blue on the door of fashion designer Sam Anselm, whom she had not connected with since essentially dropping her as costume designer 10 years earlier when bigger names came to dress her, and now in deep personal crisis she needs the ultimate outfit for one last concert, but Sam is still hurt.

Most of the runtime takes place in one room. After being reunited, the estranged friends spend most of the film shacked up in a 13th-century barn that acts as Sam’s atelier, trading violent looks over chiseled cheekbones and conjuring up old demons.

Key Facts About ‘Mother Mary’

• Director and writer: David Lowery
• Studio: A24
• Runtime: 1 hour, 52 minutes
• Rating: R
• US release: April 17, 2026 limited, April 24 wide
• Budget vs. gross: $20 million budget, around $3 million box office
• Original songs: Jack Antonoff, Charli xcx, FKA twigs
• Score: Daniel Hart

The Music, the Dress and the Long Road to Screen

The soundtrack is one of the most talked about parts of the package. The soundtrack album “Mother Mary: Greatest Hits” was announced on March 5, 2026, released on April 17, 2026 via A24 Music, and it includes seven original songs, all performed by Hathaway, with the lead single “Burial” released alongside the announcement.

Lowery has been candid about his pop reference points. He said the film was partly inspired by Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” from 1992, and he also drew inspiration from Taylor Swift’s Reputation Stadium Tour, calling her Reputation concert film one of the best concert films ever and saying that for their concert sequences they looked at it repeatedly.

The look of the film carried its own weight. Lowery picked Iris Van Herpen to design the red dress for the finale, calling her one of his favorite fashion designers and saying the dress that Sam makes, the pretence for this movie’s very existence, needed to be a work of art that would justify the entire experience of watching the film.

The journey to release was anything but smooth. Filming began in Germany in May 2023, the production was granted a waiver in July to continue filming during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike, and on July 20, 2024, Hathaway announced that filming had wrapped.

Even the editing room stretched out. Lowery said the music evolved constantly, with Antonoff and Charli watching an assembly of footage during the break between shoots and writing three or four more songs because they suddenly understood that everything had been theoretical until that point, and a lot of the songs were written from scratch after the first half of the film was shot.

What Critics and Fans Are Really Saying

The split is not subtle. Some critics adore it. Others find it stuck in its own head.

One critic put it bluntly. “Mother Mary” is David Lowery’s most ambitious movie, though it is up for debate whether it is his best, with the beauty, style and confidence of its heroines coupled with breathtaking dialogue working so well, but the overly light narrative struggles to maintain balance with odd moments of abstraction, and it can at times feel pretentious.

Others say it slips in the second act. For its first 40 to 50 minutes, “Mother Mary” feels like one of the year’s best, with a chamber piece mode that pulls you in, but this is David Lowery and he cannot resist turning his metaphors literal in his dive into phantasmagoria, and the back half is where the film stumbles.

A24’s own marketing may have set the wrong expectation. Something A24 is known for is marketing many of their films as traditional horror or thrillers when the final product is often anything but, and there are many people who are going to absolutely hate this movie, especially if they are going in thinking it is a traditional horror, thriller, or Anne Hathaway picture.

For many fans, that is exactly the point. The film does not want to be easy. It wants to be felt.

Anne Hathaway has not played it this risky in years, and that alone makes “Mother Mary” worth the ticket. Whether you walk out moved, confused or laughing, you will not forget it. The film is still in theaters now, with a digital release expected by early summer and a streaming arrival on HBO Max likely later this year. Love it or hate it, this is the kind of swing that keeps cinema alive. Tell us in the comments, did “Mother Mary” hit you in the heart or leave you cold.