‘SPOILER ALERT’

in India 1947,

Mary Lennox is left alone in a house, after losing her parents to cholera

She is found wandering alone and eating whatever she can find, before being sent to live with her uncle, Archibald Craven in a Yorkshire estate called Misselthwaite Manor

Mary is first sent to a temporary location with other children who ignore her when she wants to share a story

Mary tells herself her own stories to entertain herself but has found herself less eager to continue given the circumstances

she is picked up by Mrs. Medlock who basically tells her not to expect a conventional new home as her uncle is a very strict man

Mary goes to her room and stays there imagining herself running outside her old home

She tried to get the attention of her mother Alice but she never looked

At midnight, Mary hears what sounds like a crying sound

She goes out of her room to see but finds nothing

Craven is shown to have a hunchback and he gets rid of anything

that reminds him of his late wife Grace, who was Alice’s sister

Mary meets the maid Martha but Mary treats her rudely

Afterward, she goes out into the field to have lunch

A small dog sees her and although Mary tries to shoo the dog away

she changes her mind and follows it but loses it in the woods

When Mary returns home

she remembers playing outside her old home trying to get her mother’s attention but she just told their maid to take care of Mary so she won’t bother her

Mary asks Martha if soldiers lived in the house because she thinks she saw spirits outside

She later returns outside the next day to find the dog

Assuming it’s a girl she names the dog Jemima

She chases the dog around for fun until she is called to go back to the house

Later that night, Mary hears the crying sound again and goes to investigate

She meets Craven’s son named Colin who is sick

but the two realize they are cousins since their mothers were sisters

Mary returns to her room and dreams about how she played with her father

she talks to Martha again and says she saw Martha’s brother Dickon in the garden despite Martha denying it

Mrs. Medlock then gets Mary to talk to Craven since he is none too pleased with Mary going about the house nor that she seems to remind him too much of Grace

He tells her that if she continues to cause trouble he will send her away to a boarding school

Mary goes back to find Jemima to play together until they lose each other in a fog

and Mary finds the dog’s paw caught in a bear trap

She frees Jemima who then runs off with a wounded paw

Mary continues to wander around the garden until she sees Jemima again

She then encounters a robin that leads her to a statue that contains a key inside tells Jemima she will return the next day to tend to the leg

After a bath Mary visits Colin again and tries to encourage him to leave his room

but he claims that his condition is so bad that being outside almost killed him

She tries to talk up the garden as a magical place but he is uninterested and just asks her to read him a story that his mother used to read him

Later, Mary goes into a room with some of Grace’s old dresses

which she plays around with before finding a portrait of Grace and Alice together

She also finds and takes a pearl necklace

Mary asks Martha about Grace

stating that her mother never talked about life in England

Martha says that the two sisters were thick as thieves and that the house used to host balls

Mary has another flashback to her old home

where her father took her away, after her mother was too ill to see her and Mary snapped and wished that she would die already

Mary runs back to the garden to look for Jemima, and encounters Dickon who informs Mary that Jemima is a boy dog

They find the dog, whom they rename Hector and Dickon takes him to a lake and dips the paw in there

then lets Hector lie in the grass so that his paw can heal

Mary later tells Colin about it and suggests that he leave his bed

She wheels him into the room that she found the night before

but Colin is overwhelmed by it demands that she take him back to his room

She tries to get him to look closer

and they are sort of transported into the memory of their mothers

where they see themselves as kids playing but Colin thinks it’s a trick that Mary came up with out of jealousy for his mother loving him more than hers did

After he falls out of his chair Mary helps him back up and returns him to his room

she plays with Dickon in the garden where they imagine it growing large flowers

They decide to visit Colin, and they hatch a plan to sneak him into the garden to heal him

Although he is nervous at first

Colin is enchanted, when they go through the wall of the garden and see how beautiful it all looks

They have fun by the lake with Hector, but the fun is spoiled when Mrs. Medlock finds Mary and the pearl necklace

She is brought back to Craven, who declares that she will be sent away to the boarding school

later, Mary finds letters written by Grace and shows them to Colin

As Mary is prepared to be shipped off, she instead runs away into the garden with Colin and Dickon

In his office, Craven tries to light a candle, but drops the flame

The children then see black smoke coming from the house and rush over

Mary runs into the house to find Craven, who is looking for Colin

and She tells him that Colin is outside

As the flames grow stronger and the house starts to come down Craven is guided by a vision of Grace while Mary sees Alice says she is sorry for not knowing how sick she was

Alice kisses her daughter as she, and Craven make it out of the house safely

Mary takes Craven to Colin who begins to walk on his own and Craven embraces his son

Craven proceeds to rebuild the house

while Mary continues to spend time with Colin, Dickon and Hector in the garden.

The Secret Garden.