The Effigy of Mary Seer
2021 · 4m · UK
Directed by Ross Jameson
Genres: horror
On 13th March 1643, in a small Sussex village, an accused witch named Mary Seer was burnt at the stake — and crudely carved wooden effigies of her were sold to be tossed into the flames. Centuries later, a young girl finds one such doll in the remnants of a bonfire, and when she discovers she can see through its eye, she uncovers a terrifying truth.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects the girl to be the protagonist—instead Jameson makes the *doll* the subject, and suddenly you're trapped in the eye of an object that witnessed something no one was meant to see. It's a neat inversion that actually lands, even if it could've been weirder.
The formal device of collapsing 1643 and the present through a single point-of-view transforms folk horror into something formally rigorous; the eye as a threshold between temporal planes recalls the best of British supernatural tradition while refusing sentimentality about the victim.
That decision to literalize the POV through the carved eye—to make the viewer *become* the object rather than observe it—is economical and unsettling in a way that justifies the entire premise; four minutes and a single optical conceit does the work of a feature's atmosphere.
Festivals
- Telluride Horror Show 2021
- Hollywood Blood Horror Festival 2022, Winner