Rent American Mary (2012)

Dead-pan humour, rape/revenge, body modification. Bizarre or what? - American Mary review by RP

I really didn't know what to expect from this film - horror? torture porn? What, exactly?

It's a low budget Canadian film which combines dead-pan humour with a rape/revenge story set in the world of body modification. Bizarre or what? There aren't any shocks - other than learning what some people will apparently do to their bodies and there's no horror, or not what I call horror anyway.

What there is - despite the low budget (it was apparently shot in just 15 days) - is a stylish, well acted, good looking film with a bizarre storyline, directed by the so-called 'Twisted Sisters', the Soska twins. There aren't many women film directors, let alone of films in the horror genre - so it's worth seeing just for that - and the twins even have a cameo role.

The story itself goes something like this: Mary Mason (well played by Katherine Isabelle) is a promising medical student. Short of cash, she goes for an audition at a strip club but is diverted into sewing up a wounded (tortured?) man. One of the dancers at the club is into body modification and has had surgery to make her look like Betty Boop and introduces her to her next 'job': surgery to make a woman look even more doll-like. After that comes a rape/revenge sequence, and separately Mary's reputation grows and she build up wealth and a lengthy client list. It turns out that Mary is keeping the rapist alive and continuing his torture, but her works come back to haunt her via the husband of her first client...

With a story like that you'd expect buckets of blood and gruesome scenes, but strangely it's all quite restrained and just about everything happens off camera. So it's not torture porn at all...

It is quite well done and has the look and feel of a possible minor cult classic, but for me it's not worth watching a second time.

I'll give it 3/5 stars - it's not bad, but I've seen a lot better. Just nothing quite like it :)

Odd, sometimes gruesome, sometimes funny, body dysmorphia feminist revenge low budget film - American Mary review by PV

OK so this film is entertaining to watch though sometimes a tad gruesome, which is why it has 3 stars.

I found it funny at times, esp some of the madder female characters who demand ops.

Not so sure re the revenge theme; I always play the equal-and-opposite game at such times - I wonder what feminists would make of a male surgeon doing this stuff to the same deluded self-obsessed women.

A nice touch was the real-life people with split tongues, horns and the rest, doing cameos. All a bit weird and disturbing but original hence the 3 stars not 2.