Tuesday 4 June 2013

ONE TO WATCH? AMERICAN MARY (DVD)


From the directors of Dead Hooker In A Trunk (2009) comes this revenge story about a medical student, Mary Mason (Katherine Isabelle), who becomes increasingly broke and disenchanted with the surgical world she once admired. The allure of easy money sends her into the world of underground surgeries and ends up leaving more marks on her than her freakish clientele. It also offers a reason to get excited about the forthcoming sequel to The ABC’s Of Death (2013), in which the Soska sisters will direct a surely sanguine segment. I just hope they come up with a better name for it.

American Mary will draw comparisons with Audition (1999) and The Skin I Live In (2011), but the pace often lumbers, and although there’s a lot of well executed body horror and a watchable lead with some killer attire, the plot is a little thin on the ground with a running time that stretches further than some of Mary's patients. Still, there are some wonderfully oddball characters to enjoy, even if most of the performances are insipid at best (a cameo from the directors who play a pair of lesbian sisters willing to pay an arm and a leg for the former is excruciating). An improvement on Dead Hooker for sure, but not even the capable Mary could transform this tolerable horror into a thing of beauty. DW


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