Sometimes the algorithm finally catches up with the rest of us. Anne Hathaway's Mother Mary, the pop-star horror curiosity that flew under the radar earlier this year, is dominating streaming on HBO Max right now, per Collider, and the surge agrees with what a small but loud corner of the internet has been saying for months: this movie rules.

If you missed it, the premise is exactly the kind of weird I gravitate toward. Hathaway plays a global pop star whose life starts curdling into something genuinely unsettling, and the film plays like a fever dream stitched together from arena-tour spectacle and slow-burn religious dread. It's a rare horror movie that seems embarrassed by jump scares, which I mean as a compliment. The needle drops alone are worth the runtime, and Jess Wingo would back me up on this; the soundtrack has been living in both our rotations since it dropped.

I can't tell you exactly why it's having a moment now, and I won't pretend to. But the word of mouth built the way word of mouth used to build before every release was a two-week event: slowly, person to person, one "no seriously, just watch it" at a time. Sometimes that's all it takes. An underrated Hathaway performance just needed time to find its people.

Can we talk about Hathaway for a second? She could spend her whole career cashing rom-com and studio paychecks, and instead she keeps taking left turns. A24-adjacent horror one year, a Chris Nolan epic the next, whatever this year's strangest swing is. She's built a whole second act out of refusing to be predictable, and Mother Mary might be the best evidence of it. There's a scene about halfway through involving a soundcheck that I'm still thinking about. No spoilers, but you'll know it when it gets under your skin.

My advice is the same advice I give for anything with a strong spooky streak: watch it at night, headphones on if you can manage it, phone in another room. This is an atmosphere movie, and atmosphere doesn't survive distracted viewing.

I've already added it to my mental list of the year's best horror surprises, right next to the fall titles I'm crossing my fingers for. Now I want to hear from you. Have you watched Mother Mary yet, or are you one of the people about to discover it this weekend and wonder what took you so long? Either way, the couch is waiting.