Review of American Mary (2013) by Pamela D — 12 Feb 2014

AMERICAN MARY (2012).

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY: Jen and Sylvia Soska.

FEATURING: Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo, Tristan Risk, David Lovgren, Paula Lindberg, Clay St. Thomas.

GENRE: Non-Supernatural HORROR, THRILLER.

TAGS: rape, gore.

RATING: 5 PINTS OF BLOOD.

PLOT: A disenfranchised med student embarks on an underground body modification business, encountering an appalling succession of deviants along the way, and exacting revenge on her faculty mentor as well as all who try to stop her.

COMMENTS: Here's a bit of mildly creative cinema that doesn't fit the "general audience" mold, from Jen and Sylvia, the Soska Twins, who have brought us Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009) and some memorable shorts. With American Mary, they release a simple but serious effort that's entertaining, doesn't insult your intelligence, and is suitably macabre, disturbing, and grisly for the horror genre. Blood-soaked and dripping with sardonic acumen, American Mary establishes a tenebrous mood, thick and dark as mercurial orange surgical goo smeared on skin marked for incision.

In American Mary, the dour, two-dimensional, yet charismatic namesake is aptly portrayed by well-cast, Canadian horror movie icon Katherine Isabelle (Ginger Snaps) a competent, perhaps talented actress who despite a plethora of television roles is disappointingly underrepresented in cinema. Its a joy to see her on the big screen again. Isabelle's performance is engrossing enough to maintain our attention despite the fact that American Mary's plot, while fun, is so simplistic as to border on being a morbid ballad.

Isabelle plays a medical student whose financial obstacles prove to be a serious distraction to her studies, despite her natural talent for surgery. After an appalling incident which finds her at the mercy of depraved faculty wielding complete control over her student in good standing status, Mary drops out.

An accidental encounter while exploring alternate income options in "adult venues," draws Mary into the seamy underworld of off-the-record doctoring -the kind that wanted criminals require. Her work is so competent that it leads to a questionably distinctive career in performing radically unconscionable procedures for extreme body modification enthusiasts, the sort whose abjectly perverted requests cannot be met by even the most unscrupulously "legitimate" medical practitioners.

As Mary's clandestine business attracts a parade of increasingly insane clients from a secret Internet community, she finds herself inexorably drawn into a maelstrom of decadent criminality. She matches wits with an annoyingly persistent detective and metes out surgical retribution against her one-time faculty mentor, as well as those on the trail of his mysterious disappearance.

American Mary doesn't cover innovative new ground. It can't be accused of being overly pensive, nor will it plague us with deep brooding over abstract concepts when we exit the theater. The writers take a bit of artistic license with the factual realities of surgery, yet the film avoids becoming a mindless splatter-fest.

American Mary non-judgmentally lampoons our thriving cultural craze for ghastly plastic surgery and self-mutilation. In the film, the fad indicts itself in a way that's eerily funny and entertaining. Isabelle's presentation of Mary's taciturn yet articulate, wry, blackly comedic personality combines with an uncanny succession of bizarre social-fringe characters, darkly colorful settings, and some shocking story points, to produce a viewable and entertaining horror encounter.

The film is a cult-worthy effort for all the right reasons. It's offbeat and refreshingly free of the sort of corny camp characteristic of movies which try too hard to realize the distinction.

While American Mary proffers up a lot of black humor, its comic side is subtle and unpretentiously droll. This preserves its sinister atmosphere in a way that keeps the story genuine and credible, in turn, setting up American Mary's abruptly unexpected ending in its proper context.