Cross-media recommendations across film, TV, games, books & music — picked by taste.
Mārama is a gothic horror set in 1859: a young Māori woman is summoned from New Zealand to North Yorkshire, where she must confront the titled Englishman who devastated her family. The horror grows directly from colonial history rather than invented monsters, grounding its dread in specific injustice. If Mārama stayed with you, you're likely drawn to stories where cross-cultural collision turns violent, where imperial power is made to answer for what it has done, and where the past refuses to stay buried.
Mārama is a 2025 New Zealand gothic horror film written and directed by Taratoa Stappard and starring Ariāna Osborne, Toby Stephens, Umi Myers and Errol Shand.
From the Wikipedia article Mārama_(film), available under CC BY-SA.
Series
Genma Wars: Eve of Mythology
A monstrous ruler's obsession with fathering an heir terrorises those beneath his dominion.
Series
Trail of Lies
A woman's newborn is stolen by her own brother, who plots to claim their family's fortune as sole heir.
Series
Otogi Zoshi: The Legend of Magatama
Ancient Kyoto, politically corrupt and suffering — a city where hidden forces shape who survives.
Series
Yamaska
Three families are permanently altered by a sudden death, setting grief and consequence into motion.
Series
Gülcemal
Abandoned as a child and turned into something dangerous, a man's trajectory shifts when love enters his life.
Film
Zama
A colonial officer trapped by empire's indifference, slowly unravelling under petty humiliation and powerlessness.
Film
Zuma
An unearthed snake god turns violently destructive against anyone who stands in his way.
Film
Mara
A criminal psychologist investigating a suspicious death uncovers an ancient demon with a deadly reach.
Film
Maa
A mother and daughter face a predatory evil in a community already marked by a pattern of female disappearance.
Film
Paloma
A young woman kept closely guarded by her sister finds her world altered by a man hired as their gardener.
Film
Sisa
Colonial occupation lingers as intimate violence in a landscape of grief and silence, seen through a woman's endurance.
Zama and Sisa are the strongest film companions — both explore colonial violence through the perspective of those ground down by imperial occupation. Mara offers comparable gothic dread if the horror register is what drew you in.
The Gilda Stories is the closest match — a young Black woman escaping enslavement in the 1850s who goes on to survive as a vampire across more than a century. It shares historical trauma, female agency, and the uncanny.
It roots its horror in specific colonial history: a Māori woman summoned to the very place of her family's subjugation, to confront the titled Englishman who caused it. The dread is inseparable from the injustice, with no need for invented monsters.