American Mary (2012)

Director – Jen & Sylvia Soska, or the Soska Sisters.
Writers – Jen & Sylvia Soska
Production Company – Industry Works, American Mary Productions, Evolution Pictures

Stars - Katharine Isabelle

IMDB Page

American Mary is a one of a kind little horror movie, I didn’t want it to end!  Free spirited, nontraditional, and eccentric are just a few of the words I would use to describe this flick.  There was a weak ending in my opinion, but I’m letting it slide because this movie was all about the ride not the destination.

Mary is a young promising medical student hoping to become a surgeon.  She’s a hard worker and seemingly adored by her instructors.  Like many people going through years of expensive schooling she finds herself in financial turmoil, Mary starts looking for a way to make extra cash to continue her schooling.  So with her desire to gain some financial security she decides to answer an ad to become an escort.

Mary ends up at a very seedy strip joint where she meets Billy the owner, they’re not too far into the “interview” when something comes up and Mary’s medical skills come into play.  Mary’s offered a significant amount of money to help Billy, she just needs to perform surgery or a dying man that’s been brought into the club…and so it begins. 

SPOILERS

Mary soon finds that surgeons are needed in all areas of life, after her first on the fly surgery she’s lured in to a new world of body modification due to someone witnessing her save the man at the bar.  It’s a dark, hidden world where Mary’s knife skills, the need to keep things secretive, and the chunk of change she can earn work well together.

You meet some insane little characters along the way, and as strange and shocking as they are - I felt like the film did a pretty good job of letting us see their desperation in needing these body modifications.  Sure it’s not what’s considered normal, but with the extreme lengths they were willing to go you could see that these weren’t just piercings or tattoos to them.  These were changes they needed made in order for them to be the person that they felt they were inside.

And then it happens, something that sets Mary off and makes her choose to go all the way with her new career in body modification, ditching school.  I have to say it would be cool if one day it wasn’t just rape that set a woman off – but I still really loved this flick and it was so inventive with all the trappings around it that I’ll let it slide.

After she’s raped, Mary quits school and decides to fully pursue her new found venture.  She dives in head first and has quite the little business going on in no time.  There’s a little revenge sprinkled in here too, not the best part of the movie in my opinion.  Revenge rape thrillers are done constantly, what I liked about this movie was that the rape resulted in Mary taking on something she was wonderful at, something that was shocking and believable at the same time, something that made her a superstar but would also be her undoing. 

Now for the flaws, we have a few characters that we’re introduced to that could have added a lot to the movie but instead they seem sort of thrown in to me.  We have a very sympathetic detective investigating the disappearance of a nasty sexual deviant surgeon, Mary’s “former” teacher.  He seems to have caught on to Mary being a part of his disappearance but that’s as far as that goes.  I think he could have been incorporated more in to the story.  My thoughts were to have him be the angel on Mary’s shoulder, or have him even get his feet wet into Mary’s world, shoot, she’s hard to resist.

The ending - I thought the ending was terrible, it’s shot gorgeously but it was a complete let down.  I did not want the movie to end, and when the ending sucks on top of you wanting the movie to be longer, you get sad. Mary’s met at home one day by a former client’s husband - he had only been in the movie for like 1 minute’s time before he gets to have his moment.  I just think he and the back story he had isn’t explored enough for him to be the nail in the coffin.

Overall I love the look and feel of this film, it was pretty inventive and Mary (Katharine Isabelle) is straight up Awesome.  I would not recommend this to everyone, it’s for people who love fantasy type horror set it the real world.  Great ride..