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Week 1 - November 8th, 2013
American Mary
Mary is a medical student trying to become a surgeon. She is smart, skilled and beautiful. Low on money, she applies at a strip club, but ends up having to save the life of a tortured man instead (don't ask). A dancer, with a face full of plastic, gets a hold of her resume and calls her up, asking for a favour. This favour lets Mary use her medical skills and earns her big cash. Things seem to be going well for Mary, her instructor even invites her to a party....but good things don't last long. Mary is drugged and raped at the party and takes it upon herself to get revenge, using her....medical skills.
So this is a rape revenge film that seems uninterested in either of those things. Both of them happen in the middle of the film and are not really revisited again. There is a detective that is looking for the instructor, but not much else. She never takes revenge on the other doctors at the party. Instead this new feeling of power makes her open up her own body modification business. Doing the weird and abnormal things that other surgeons wouldn't normally do. Tongue splitting, limb exchange, horns....this film reveals a whole subculture of the grotesque and weird.
I feel like the film doesn't really have much of a story to tell. It relies on making you squirm a bit with the medical scenes, which are tame and short. We have no connection to our lead, and there is no climax. The film goes around aimlessly through the motions of what a movie should be. I found the most interesting and creepy thing about the film are the two woman who have gone to the extreme with the plastic surgery that their faces look like porcelain dolls.
Character relationships are thrown together and make no sense. The detective on the case never really pursues Mary, so there is no suspense of "will she get caught".
There are makings of a good cult film here, unfortunately American Mary falls short in far too many areas to be considered so.
American Mary
Mary is a medical student trying to become a surgeon. She is smart, skilled and beautiful. Low on money, she applies at a strip club, but ends up having to save the life of a tortured man instead (don't ask). A dancer, with a face full of plastic, gets a hold of her resume and calls her up, asking for a favour. This favour lets Mary use her medical skills and earns her big cash. Things seem to be going well for Mary, her instructor even invites her to a party....but good things don't last long. Mary is drugged and raped at the party and takes it upon herself to get revenge, using her....medical skills.
So this is a rape revenge film that seems uninterested in either of those things. Both of them happen in the middle of the film and are not really revisited again. There is a detective that is looking for the instructor, but not much else. She never takes revenge on the other doctors at the party. Instead this new feeling of power makes her open up her own body modification business. Doing the weird and abnormal things that other surgeons wouldn't normally do. Tongue splitting, limb exchange, horns....this film reveals a whole subculture of the grotesque and weird.
I feel like the film doesn't really have much of a story to tell. It relies on making you squirm a bit with the medical scenes, which are tame and short. We have no connection to our lead, and there is no climax. The film goes around aimlessly through the motions of what a movie should be. I found the most interesting and creepy thing about the film are the two woman who have gone to the extreme with the plastic surgery that their faces look like porcelain dolls.
Character relationships are thrown together and make no sense. The detective on the case never really pursues Mary, so there is no suspense of "will she get caught".
There are makings of a good cult film here, unfortunately American Mary falls short in far too many areas to be considered so.