“This is not a ghost story,” says on-screen text in the middle of the trailer for David Lowery’s strange new movie Mother Mary. It’s a catchy line. It’s also a little bit strange when that trailer is for a movie whose director made a movie literally called A Ghost Story. (We get it, Lowery’s fans might say to themselves. This is not a Pete’s Dragon, either.) Actually watching Mother Mary in the context of Lowery’s other work, however, clarifies that sentence, even if it’s ultimately just good marketing. At this point, Lowery has made several movies that feature ghosts without resorting to many familiar trappings of haunting narratives. He may be the most ghost-fixated filmmaker who has yet to make an actual horror film.

Mother Mary comes closer to the genre than anything Lowery's done so far, trailer protestations notwithstanding. The set-up initially resembles the dynamics of a stage play, with estranged besties Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) and Sam Anselm (Michaela Coel) reuniting unexpectedly and chatting, mostly alone in a cavernous farmhouse on Sam’s property. The twist in their relationship is that Mary, as you might guess from her lofty moniker, is actually a globally famous pop star. Sam, a fashion designer, was her creative collaborator until Mary abruptly curtailed their partnership years ago. Now, Mary has turned up on Sam’s doorstep, desperate for a new dress to wear for her comeback concert.

The horror accumulates gradually. There’s an element of psychological duel in their reunion, and eventually it turns into a kind of exorcism (hence the trailer’s “this is a prayer,” presumably) as Mary and Sam each recount their experiences with some kind of ghostly entity, depicted as a writhing stretch of red fabric. (These passages are increasingly visual, though it’s still easy to picture a version where they would just be monologues on........

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