Sick Product of a Sick System

Powerful

In truth, any opportunity to see the film on the big screen is welcome.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

American Mary is billed as a movie about a medic who turns her back on the medical establishment and becomes involved in underground surgery for paying customers, who wish to have surgery the establishment would refuse. For obvious reasons as its mainly for shallow aesthetic reasons.It is well known that there are groups of people who demand surgery to change their appearance for any number of reasons but standing in their way is a medical establishment which refuses on ethical grounds. Why remove healthy tissue for aesthetic reasons? It seems that this wish fulfilment of a trained surgeon who will perform this type of surgery on demand, if you are rich enough, resulted in the character of Mary. She is basically a body-mod kinksters dream come true. It it doesn't take long for us to see the movie for what it is. It's a thinly veiled revenge movie against the medical establishment, most likely because they refuse to get involved with surgery this scene, where the supposed hero is much worse than her prey. The writers and directors the Soska twins, who I have never heard of before this movie, look like the cheeky girls at a goth disco. They turn up, assault a dancer for no reason then ask to have their bodyparts swapped for no sensible reason, other than they think it will be cool and they are rich enough to pay for it. This tells you pretty much what you need to know about the writers of this movie. There is the theme in this movie that wishing to use surgery to change your appearance is somehow leftfield or subcultural, however plastic surgery is now so mainstream celebrities don't even bother to conceal the fact they have had it. The only difference seems to be style. Most people by adulthood will realise that by dressing in back or adopting a subcultural dress code doesn't make people individualistic, especially when that subculture all look the same. If anything, they look more conformist in their uniforms.The movie seems to send quite a shallow message which is wearing black is cool, pointless violence is cool, swearing is cool, being rich is cool and prolonged torture is cool as long as its revenge. However, for revenge films to work properly the revenge has to be proportional. In this case its not. She is by far the worst person in the movie, however we are supposed to believe she is a good person because she still chats to her grandmother on the phone? That doesn't quite balance out against the sadism. As a result you don't care what happens to her.There are very few movies which deal with body modification which could have made this an interesting project. The movie seems to focus on the trendy for some fetish scene of body modification and is very shallow as a result. There didn't seem to be a mention of the well-known phenomena of people who wish to have healthy limbs removed and will risk death to achieve this outcome. There is surprisingly very little debate in this movie about the ethics of people who wish to have serious modifications of healthy tissue and the medical professions rejection of these procedures. The ridiculousness of some of the procedures in the movie beggars belief, but because Maybe this is why the bad guys are medics and Mary gets to torture them?This movie will likely only appeal to a mostly teenage subculture audience who already have an interest in body modification, which is very very few people. The problem with movies which focus on specific fetishes is they have a very narrow appeal. Unless you get off on bodymod stuff, which I suspect where most of the high ratings for this movie comes from, you may have a better use for your time.

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.

Canadian actress Katharine Isabelle popped onto the scene in Ginger Snaps, one of the most original and memorable films ever to emerge from a country that specializes in tired sequels and technically perfect but massively dull x-mas special and lifestyle movies.(Typically, they tried two sequels to Ginger, each worse than the other.) Mainstream should have snapped her up, she has both looks and talent, but this guilty pleasure from the Soska sisters, which branded it as a cult film from the moment they put film in the camera, nonetheless gets a great and memorable performance from Isabelle.She deftly plays against type, but being coy in a part which shows her visually to be stunning and characteristically to be a killer. It is a joy to watch her work,

Modern imitation of some of David Cronenbergs' filmography is nonetheless interesting and watchable on its own terms. It's really more of a drama than a horror film, with touches of gore and dark comedy, and is slow paced enough that it may have some viewers fumbling for their remotes. It plunges the audience into a world of sordid and off putting characters in a tale of sex and fetishism. Ultimately, it works its way towards a somewhat conventional finish, but getting there is still an amusing enough experience.The lovely Katharine Isabelle, best known for her role as Ginger in the "Ginger Snaps" series, stars as Mary, a promising med student in desperate need of cash. So she accepts the offer from nightclub owner Billy (Antonio Cupo) to patch up a mangled associate of his. This leads to offers from other people, people who are into radical body modification, to perform a variety of "underground surgery". As Mary is immersed in this world more and more, it really takes a toll on her well-being.If it weren't for Ms. Isabelle, who looks extremely sexy in a variety of outfits, this would have been a little harder to get through. She delivers an engaging lead performance, and is believable throughout Mary's personality arc. It is fun to see Mary take her new business so seriously that she dismisses one potential patient who's willing to settle for something as mundane as piercings. And we do get to see a number of individuals who've had some pretty nasty things done to themselves.Some people may want to note that at least the gore in this movie is serving the story and never *becoming* the whole reason for its existence. The effects are generally well done.Sibling directors Jen and Sylvia Soska (who also cameo in "American Mary" as the German twins) do have some potential, so it will be intriguing to watch the progress of their careers.Six out of 10.