American Mary

Director: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska (2012)
Starring: Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo, Tristan Risk
Find it: IMDB

The second coming of Horror Jesus, or something. American Mary is the sort of thoroughly mediocre thing everyone loves these days, along with the work of Tom Six (it's edgy because some woman's sucking arse), Eli Roth (it's edgy because he saw a Takashi Miike film once) and Cabin in the Woods. Modern horror must really stink if this is the best that the new 'Masters' have to offer.

American Mary stars Katharine Isabelle as the titular Mary, a talented young student surgeon who embraces underground plastic surgery as a means to make some cash and get revenge upon those who wronged her at a party once. It's by no means a bad film, but neither is it in any way as good as others have made it out to be. There are some nifty visuals and appropriately grotesque scenes of gore and violence, but it's a very vapid experience. Were it not for Isabelle giving it her all, as ever, her Mary would be unbearable. As it is, she's stuck with an awfully smug, self-aware script. With a story which lacks direction and purpose, it ambles along for awhile before becoming lost up its own surgically stretched arsehole. I repeat, however, that it's not a bad film. Were it not for the overhype and the smug attitude, it'd be a perfectly tolerable watch. I'd probably even be championing it as 'not bad.'

"Appearances are everything" goes American Mary's tagline. Well, no, not quite. You need a little something beneath the hood too.