American Mary — Revenge Movie or Something Else?!

American Mary is the sophomore effort of the Soska sisters and it stars Katharine Isabelle as Mary. You may remember Katharine as Ginger from Ginger Snaps & Ginger Snaps Back. Mary Mason is a surgical student who is struggling financially. She decides to take up stripping to support herself and that is where things go terribly wrong for her. She suffers a trauma at the hands of a man and from that point makes a series of horrible decisions that completely alter the course of her life. I hate spoilers so I’ll stop there since this film was just released on DVD/VOD June 18, 2013. I must be on a roll lately with movies choices because I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I was extremely impressed with the quality of the film and given that it was shot in 15 days on a limited budget it did not look cheap at all. In a nod to the 80s the Soska sisters did not use any CGI just good old fashioned make up & prosthetics. The choice of Katharine Isabelle to play Mary was genius. She carried the movie in my opinion. She is gorgeous and does demented & apathetic very well. There were a few other over the top characters that added to the film’s quirkiness and were fun to stare at in a “how’d they do that?” sort of way. I am not entirely sure what the film’s message was but that is ok. I think different people will take away different messages. I laughed, I cringed, felt sick at least once and I came to care about Mary and her fate. American Mary won’t be nominated for an Academy Award but it has style & originality and was worth the 4.99 VOD fee. I may even buy the DVD and I don’t do that very often 🙂

Little Miss Horror Nerd’s Rating: 4/5

You can rent American Mary on VOD here.