American Mary (2013)

Strapped for cash, a medical student finds a lucrative career in performing elective surgeries on the black market in this highly unusual Canadian film. As the title character gains an underground reputation, she begins to perform more and more controversial procedures, including split tongues, offbeat piercings, horns and genital mutilation at the request at her diverse clientele who take pleasure in transforming their bodies in a Clive Barker or David Cronenberg sense. Katharine Isabelle is excellent in the lead role as she gradually goes from disliking the job to fully embracing it. The film is, however, compromised by a subplot in which she kidnaps and ever-so-slowly mutilates a date rapist. This leads to a bunch of dry, formulaic moments in which she has to contend with nosy detectives, whereas the juice of the film lies in the fetishes of her clientele. The film also spends little time on the pleasure versus pain debate that made Barker's original 'Hellraiser' so fascinating. And yet, there remains a lot to like in the film's insight into untold pleasures and the championing of individual expression through altering one's body. Quite acutely, Isabelle also seems to get more and more mentally unhinged with each repeated surgery, which pokes into some interesting questions as to just how much one can distort a human body without starting to feel a little distorted oneself.

The thing that annoys me most about the internet is that weirdo losers living in their mom's basement can stand in judgment of absolute brilliance. Anyone who gave this film a bad review is a complete and utter jackass. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but if you didn't like this film then yours is just wrong. The Soska Sisters have done it again, and with endorsements of their genius by such horror luminaries as Clive Barker, Eli Roth, and Daniel Schaffer I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could not recognize the importance of this motion picture within a genre with so traditionally bereft of great offerings. Whatever kind of crack you're smoking perhaps you should share it with the rest of us so that we might, too, become so blissfully ignorant about the world around us. Here's an idea: shave off your stupid chin beard, lay off the Fritos, get out in the sun once in a while, and stop judging the innovative and refreshingly unique perspective of artists who are out there doing amazing stuff when you clearly know @#?! all about the creative process, writing, filmmaking, and perhaps, most importantly, the female experience. Just a thought.

The film starts out in a very interesting manner but completely dies through time. The extreme overall creepiness kinds of gets the toll on the spectator and kills the novelty. Without taking into consideration that it really lacks any real action scenes. It becomes then quite repetitive and the end completely reflects that decline I believe.Katharine Isabelle is extremely cold, cynical and quite disturbing. That's a start. Her psychology evolves from being a "normal woman" to a total 'controlled' psycho or even a serial killer to say the least. But I hardly could really differentiate when she was her 'normal' self in the first part of the movie and before that dramatic event for her from these phases of psychopathy. Either her acting was too perfectly suited for the film, which I think it was at certain phases or either it was really uni-dimensional bordering boring at times. At such a point that her true emotions were rarely convincing actually, or if she had any. In other words, she cold as boiling water when she is a lovable princess and still in a similar state when she is in lock-down psychopath mode so, it really does ask the question why did they really try to paint out these two versions about her ? Was just to really build the cheap scenario ? The focus on her life pre- psychopathy is like 3 minutes of the film and there is like literally no build up towards Jekyll.Overall the movie appears totally creepy, disturbing at times no only with the surgical practices that she did but also the certain characters who are literally just weirdos. The combination of 'Mozart'- like music and creepiness tries to pull it almost as an art but not so much.Concentrating on the detective, John Emmet Tracy, his role is actually quite laughable. A true filler for the poor scenario. Casper's invisibility cape was working full time there especially when the end of the film is taken into account. I'm not sure why they actually played this card when they did not expand it to its full powers. The relationship between Katharine Isabelle and John Emmet Tracy is poor, falls completely flat especially when you as a spectator expects a build-up tension, conflict [...] none of it. Which makes me say that he was a complete filler and a cheap excuse to try and diversify the scenario.This film did not really know where it wanted to go. Full vengeance mode, in that case they should have created a better build-up (something which makes me remember Kill Bill, a reference) or a crazy serial killer and in that situation I would have expected a better relationship between the serial killer and authority. And if it was purely about decadence, then the psychology of Katharine Isabelle is somewhat well represented, though, again, you feel that there's always still that rope holding them back and preventing them from really pushing the movie far.Another poor relationship is the one between Katharine Isabelle and Antonio Cupo. You always had the impression that they were to fall in love or have a relationship. Certain scenes make you even believe that she was in love with him, yet, again, all this is really very poorly developed.So my overall and final feeling is American Mary is tame. The relationship between essential characters is left to be desired. Her acting was one-dimensional. But, it had potential which was very badly developed.

Yes, it's Halloween. Apart from fobbing all my past-it's-best-before-date confectionery onto hapless trick or treaters, and jumping out from behind corners to try to give old people heart attacks. I've seen an alleged scary movie. And you're reading the review of it right now. Go you.It's all about this lady, see? She's in training to be a surgeon. After being assaulted at a party by her lecturer, she decides to chop his arms and legs off. Now THAT'S vengeance. Then she quits medical school, and becomes exclusively involved with performing body modifications on the weirdos in our society. Including: A girl who literally wants to become a Living Doll, two sisters who want to exchange their left arms as a sign of their closeness(?) and a dude who fancies a crack at looking like Beelzebub himself... Horns and all. It LOOKS good, but I thinks his dreams of working the till at his local Co-op are well and truly shattered.Will you want to avert your eyes on a few occasions, at the sight of split tongues, severed limbs and more blood gushing out than you'd find in a vampire's larder? Probably. But are there any moments, where you feel the hair prickle on the back of your neck, as something unknown creeps around the darkness, ready to strike...? Nope. It's all rather dull, with our heroine interacting with some not-quite-interesting characters, before getting busy with her operating table for long, drawn out procedures. Not too much of note happens, apart from the repetitive presence of REAL LIFE freaks as extras showing off their mutilations. Nice, guys.As for the ending... It must have been early opening time at the pub that day, as it seems such a arbitrary afterthought that even using the term tacked-on doesn't do it justice. It's all a little lightweight, and will soon be forgotten by the OTHER horror film I plan to watch tonight before beddy byes.OOPS, gotta go there's another knock at my door.. Now where did I put that Xmas 2011 candy... 4/10