'American Mary' Review

"American Mary" is one of those horror films that everybody raves about. I've had so many people tell me that it's a great movie, that I decided to sit down and watch it for myself.

I'm not sure if it's the fact that it's a slasher film made by women, (namely the infamous Soska Sisters), or it's taboo topic of extreme body modification that made people fall in love with it. Many people find the film appealing because it's subversive; it puts some rather unsettling taboos right out there for everyone to see.

"American Mary" presented an extreme social taboo in a way that makes it fashionable in horror subcultures; much like the sado-masochistic bondage, and the religion of experiencing pain as pleasure that the Cenobites from Clive Barker's "Hellraiser" did in the 1980s.

Watching "American Mary" is like getting to play Peeping Tom into the perverted closet of a body modder that has a fetish for black vinyl, high heels, and skin tight latex catsuits. That is why I think that it's going to be an important movie of note in the future, and why it has already achieved it's cult classic status here in the United States.

Warning: Spoilers ahead! If you haven't watched the movie, stop reading now! 

Mary Mason is a medical student who is struggling to pay her bills. When money gets really tight, Mary applies for a job at a strip club. When the owner, Billy Barker, discovers that she is studying to be a surgeon, he convinces her to help stitch up one of his men that was just attacked for several thousands of dollars. She does such a great job patching the guy up that she then gets hired on as a personal medic that Billy calls on from time to time when things get rough at his club.

Soon after, one of the strippers, a crazy gal named Beatrice who had plastic surgery to make herself look like Betty Boop (Yeah, I know. It looks just as bad as it sounds) approaches Mary and asks her to help out a friend of hers, called Ruby Realgirl, who can no longer get plastic surgeons to do work on her.

Beatrice

Ruby Realgirl, the Living Barbie Doll

Mary reluctantly agrees to perform radical surgery on Ruby because she offers to pay her a lot of money, enough to pay off most of her bills, and help her live comfortably for a while.

When asked why she wants it done, Ruby explains that she doesn't want to be seen as a sex object. She wants to have her labia and nipples removed so that she looks like a doll, because dolls are pure in her mind, and she wants nothing more than to be like one.

Then, in one of the squickiest scenes of the movie, we see Mary cutting off lady parts and dropping what appears to be the outermost bits of Ruby's genitalia  onto the floor. She then removes her nipples and sews everything shut.

Mary stays up all night, completely freaked out because what she just did to that woman is irreversible, and this comes to haunt her later on in the movie.

To be honest with you, this part of the plot would've worked a little better if it weren't for the "surprise" reveal later on. But we'll get to that in a minute.

Why does my lipstick match the booth cushion vinyl?

Soon after taking on a few high paying, albeit illegal, surgical jobs, Mary is invited to a party by one of the top surgeons at the hospital she works at. There, she runs into Dr. Grant, one of her former professors, who also happens to be a total asshat who made her life a living hell while she was in his classes.

Dr. Douchebag, Mary, and Dr. Asshat (Dr. Grant)

It doesn't take long for Mary to realize that she was invited to a sex party. But before she can make a hasty retreat, Dr. Grant slips her a Mickey (GHB), which puts her in a total stupor and unable to fight him off as he rapes her. Mary had thought that she was finally being accepted by her peers, but it turns out she was only invited so that Dr. Grant could have his way with her.

This makes Mary snap. Whatever was left inside of her that was good, dies that night.

She has the thugs/armed muscle from the strip club (who also happen to become her personal bodyguards) kidnap Dr. Grant and it looks like once she gets her hands on him, she tortures and kills him.

Soon after, Mary drops out of med school, and becomes an full time surgeon who performs illegal operations on people who want extreme body modifications; from having horns implanted into their foreheads to hand amputation. Nothing is too extreme for her. Mary does it all.

Word of her skill gets out, and she gains attention of identical twin sisters that run a body modification magazine/website. And this is where the movie begins to fall apart like a poorly stitched together flesh wound.

The twins are played by the Soska Sisters, who have by now gained a name for themselves and their Twisted Twins Productions of slasher films.

The completely unnecessary of the cameos of the Soska Sisters playing the Gothic identical twins from some vague Eastern European nation that run a popular body modification ezine website was distracting at best, and annoying at worst; mainly because it was their characters involvement that convinces Mary to start putting her "work" on the Internet, and that is how Mary ends up losing her life.

Soon after meeting the wonder twins and swapping the sick sibling's limbs, it is revealed that Mary kept Dr. Grant alive, and that she had been performing extreme body modifications on Dr. Grant to get her revenge.

The pictures of her work that she shows to prospective clients, are actually pictures that she takes after torturing Dr. Asshat.

Mary performed countless irreversible body modifications on Dr. Grant, up to and including limb amputation. It is this plot twist that turns what could've been a very original body horror film into yet another piece of revenge filled torture porn.

Mary's biggest mistake is taking pictures of the doctor-turned-gimp and posting them on the Internet. This digital trail is how the detectives who are investigating the death of the surgeon (aka Dr. Douchebag) that invited Mary to the party stumble upon her highly illegal "operations."

It's also at this point when I started to wonder just what the hell the scriptwriter was doing with this one. It started out so good, but then turned into a different movie altogether. "Bloody Mary" went from a very interesting, quirky character with a penchant for surgery, to another wronged girl out to literally emasculate the man that raped her.  Don't get me wrong. I think that Katharine Isabelle did a fantastic job as the titular role of Mary Mason. But even her top-notch acting couldn't save the end of the film.

The characters of Mary, Beatrice, and Ruby are intriguing and could've been used to great effect to make a movie an intense character study of the types of people who live in the perverse subculture of extreme body modification, but they instead are cast aside and then overshadowed by a glaring plot hole that completely ruins the movie.

After the big twist of Mary keeping Dr. Grant as her own personal living surgical doll. is revealed, some personal things happen to Mary, like the death of her Grandmother, and the minor subplot of the strip club owner, Billy, having a huge crush on her/

My biggest problem with the last third of the movie is that all logic that was followed up until that point is thrown out the window. For someone trying to stay off the radar of the local police because she is making a ton of money by performing illegal, and sometimes irreversible body modification surgery on people without a medical license, Mary doesn't really try very hard to stay that hidden. She ends up having her own surgical theater built into her studio apartment, instead of keeping it at another location that isn't even remotely near where she lives like any other person who is doing such dangerous work.

Ultimately, the living doll Ruby's husband discovers that she's had drastic surgery done on her body, and he goes looking for the person that mutilated his wife.
He beats up Beatrice and finds out that it was Mary and follows her home. Once Mary walks into her apartment, he attacks her. She kills him, but, is too severely injured to live.

Mary's studio apartment set up, with the surgical theater in it, of course, is used as a convenient moment of author's fiat at the very end of the movie, when Mary crawls over to her studio and attempts to stitch shut her fatal stab wounds and ends up bleeding to death.

I had thought that the whole body modification thing would've been what really left a bad taste in my mouth after watching this movie, but it turns out that the ending was far worse that what Ruby Realgirl had done to her body on screen.

"American Mary" is a movie that started out with a good premise and ran with it for awhile at full steam, before it formed a debilitating cramp in its side and the plot suddenly, and rather abruptly, fell apart at the seams as it stopped to catch its breath.

For all of the recognition "American Mary", and the Soska Sisters, received for being an important entry in modern horror, to me the movie just didn't earn its praise. This is mainly because it turned out to be just another slasher film with a lot of revenge porn in it, and that was very disappointing, because for all of it's potential, this two woman-helmed slasher film really didn't live up to it's hype in the slightest.

If you like blood and guts and gore, high heels, girls that are easy on the eyes, and torture porn, you'll love "American Mary." But if you're actually looking for a good slasher movie with an interesting plot, you're not going to find it here.

'The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh' Review

It's a dark night of the soul for Leon Leigh when he returns to his mother's home and has to deal with buried emotions from a traumatic past.

"The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is one of those independent horror movies that has such an impact on the art of film itself, that everyone should see it, and it should be used to teach film to students. It's really that good.



There is a heavy weight to this movie, and right off the bat it's easy to see that the cinematography is top notch. The director's artistic style creates a moody, brooding atmosphere with set pieces that are discordant, and discomfiting, and a great visual representation of a main character who isn't comfortable in his own skin.

Rosalind Leigh's house itself is the main character of the movie. Instead of just being a backdrop, everything in the house has meaning. The rooms are full of menace, and the house appears to be watching Leon's every move.

There's life-sized statues, and suits of armor that give the audience the impression that the objects themselves are alive and stalking Leon. At one point in the movie, this turns out to be exactly the case, with terrifying results.

Look at this statue! It's brooding, looming presence is felt the moment it appears onscreen. Those big saucer eyes see everything that occurs in the house. I wouldn't want that thing greeting me every time I came home. Yikes! 

Rosalind's cross-stitch needlepoint pieces in particular, are used not only as a symbol for Rosalind, but they also helps establish an otherworldly aura to the house.

Every room is chock-a-block full of knick-knacks, antiques and collectibles; most of which are angels or creepy dolls. The hodgepodge of clutter lends a certain creepiness to the place, especially when Leon realizes that all of the antiques are things that he has sold over the years and that his mother was his best customer. She was so obsessed with being with him that she purchased everything that he touched in an effort to be close to him.

In addition to obsession, Rosalind's life was ruled by superstition, and the strange religious practices of an angel cult.

It is soon revealed by Rosalind that she had purposefully placed strange objects in odd locations around her house in an effort to show Leon that the soul lives beyond death; that she is still there, in that house, waiting for him to contact her.

Needless to say, Rosalind was a very disturbed woman.

After joining a strange angel cult, her husband committed suicide.

The mysterious circumstances surrounding his death are never fully explored. Personally, I think that the cult with it's talk of the soul surviving death, and Rosalind's fractured mind, are what drove Mr. Leigh to kill himself.

"Faith is Fragile"

Rosalind was forced to raise her son on her own. Unable to handle the pressure and stress of raising a son by herself, she turned her frustrations and anger outward and tortured Leon psychologically by playing the "Candles Game."

She would ask him if he believed in God, and every time he said no, she'd blow out a candle and tell him if it got dark, the Angel would turn it's back on him and God would hate him.

It was his mother's mind games that forced Leon to push her away, and left him emotionally scarred.

After he left and cut off all contact with her, Rosalind became obsessed with her son, and felt guilty over the fact that her deep faith in her angel cult is what drove them apart.

Once the audience has had time to really absorb the spooky ambiance of the house, and learn why there are statues and things that are just not right on display everywhere, the creepiness factor slowly begins to amp up as strange, unsettling things start to happen. At first, it's subtle, but soon, you will find yourself wondering,  is this real, or is Leon hallucinating while his mind tries to come to terms with his dead mother's abuse?

Personally, I think that it's both.

What makes "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" so great, aside from the fact that it is so beautifully directed,  is that it has countless layers to it.

On the surface it's a movie about a man coming to terms with child abuse. But beneath that, it's a movie about a cult that ruined a family, and a woman's faith that turns out to be all too real.

Whether or not it is Rosalind's will that brings about the manifestation of the demon Loneliness, called in the movie the creature or the wild animal that came from the woods, it's clear that it is a physical representation of the regret, and bitter anger that Leon feels towards his mother.

The demon Loneliness brings to mind the creature from the famous painting "The Nightmare" by Henry Fuseli. In the painting, the foul beast sits on the dreamer's chest and suffocates them, much like Rosalind's loneliness and regret suffocated her so much that it drove her to commit suicide.

The supernatural occurrences are very suspenseful and tense, to the point of being cringe worthy at times, because you really don't want to see what is chasing after Leon. But since watching and sight are themes of the movie, you are forced to open your eyes and watch with him, terrified of what you will see when the camera finally reveals it.

Fun Fact: I thought that it was a clever way to incorporate angelic themes, since Angels that are on Earth, the Grigori, are called The Watchers. 

Ultimately, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a wonderfully scary character study of an abusive mother-son relationship, wherein the mother uses religion to control her child. It may not seem like much at the start, because the movie is so quiet and brooding, but by the end, you will find yourself not wanting to watch this movie in the dark by yourself because it's so terrifying and suspenseful. By far, "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" is a fantastic independent horror film that doesn't get the attention, or credit, that it deserves. I highly recommend that you watch this movie and see it's terrifying beauty for yourself.

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Watch the trailer of "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" below!



If you don't want to read spoilers, stop reading here.

OK, the rest of you still with us?

Good.

There is a lot of debate over what happens at the end of the film. Here's my interpretation. 

Leon suffered a mental breakdown where he literally thought that he was being haunted by an angel statue, and terrorized by the demon Loneliness while going over the belongings that he inherited from his mother. When he refuses to believe in God, the Angel, the survival of souls after death, and the demon Loneliness, it abruptly stops being real. His disbelief takes away the demon's power. It also denies Rosalind's ghost the closure she so desperately needed.

Leon hated his mother so much, that he disowned her, and the more she wanted him back in her life, the further it pushed him away. This final act of denial, of refusing to acknowledge Rosalind's faith and her ghost, robs Rosalind of the last shred of hope she had left. Leon manages to fight through his own emotional turmoil and comes to terms with an abusive childhood, and leaves the house unscathed.

Rosalind's sad, lonely ghost is now stuck in her house, driven by her own guilt and remorse to repeat the events that occurred after her death for all eternity. Rosalind's testament of her love for her son Leon, (the antiques, and then the house itself) is denied and sold off.

It's a happy ending for Leon, as he finally manages to move on and put his childhood traumas behind him. It's a sad ending for Rosalind because she never receives the closure, and forgiveness from Leon, that she so desperately needed.

The Title "The Last Will and Testament of Rosalind Leigh" Explained
The title has two layers. At the surface, it's a movie about the death of Rosalind Leigh and the house that she left to her only son in her will. Beneath the surface, it's about Rosalind's dying wishes, and her testament to her faith, and her love for her son.

Rosalind Leigh's last will was her yearning to be acknowledged and loved by her son. Her testament of her love for her son was the house full of things that Leon sold over the years that she bought.

Rosalind Leigh's last will and testament were destroyed when Leon refused to forgive her of her sins and return her love and turned his back on the house that he grew up in. If the will had been a piece of paper, Leon would've torn it up and set it on fire, and then walked away before the paper had been completely turned to ash. See, the title is a metaphor. And now you know.

"The Babadook" is a Horrific Fairytale Come to Life

"The Babadook" is a brilliant Australian horror film about Amelia, who tragically lost her husband in an accident on the same day that she gave birth to their son, Samuel. Samuel, now seven years old, has become utterly paranoid about monsters coming to get him, up to the point that he is making and carrying weapons with him to school.

Even with dealing with the stresses of being a single mother with no social support to speak of, Amelia tries to take care of her son, and always reads him a bedtime story.

One night, Samuel finds a new book on his shelf, titled "Mister Babadook." The terrifying pop-up book is about the self-titular boogeyman, who wears a top hat and has long, sinister clawed hands. Shortly after reading the book, Amelia starts to see signs that perhaps the Babadook is real. But, is she just projecting her guilt and anger towards her son onto an imaginary creature, or is something more sinister going on?

The line between fiction and reality slowly become blurred in this atmospheric thriller, and you are left wondering if Amelia has gone insane, or if the Babadook really after her and her son.

I have a thing for psychological horror films that incorporate the very old style of fairytale stories, you know, the ones where the fairies are hideous monsters that kidnap children and replace them with fetches or magical duplicates or changelings. They also spirit people away and hold them captive against their will in the Otherworld, which drives them utterly, and irrevocably, insane.

The moment I saw the trailer for "The Babadook" I knew that it was going to be one of those fairytale horror movies.

Fellow movie reviewer and awesome friend of mine Derrick Carter aka Dead Derrick, was lucky enough to see "The Babadook" at the Sundance Film Festival last month. While he did find some flaws in the film, overall, he absolutely loved it! You can read his entire review here

Six Reasons why 'The Conjuring' is a Wonderfully Scary Frightfest

'The Conjuring' is based on not just one, but two true stories. It follows the ghost hunting husband and wife team, the Warrens, and the Perrons, a large family of seven that move into a haunted house. There are so many things in the movie that make it good, so it was a bit hard, but I did manage to figure out the six main things that make this ghost movie so good, and so scary.

6. The Doll Annabelle

The doll Annabelle was based on the possessed Raggedy Ann doll of the same name that has been featured in several ghost TV shows over the years.

The Warrens are a real ghost hunting couple who encountered the doll and locked her up in a case, similar to the one that Annabelle is kept in the movie.

The Warrens worked closely with the producers, which I feel only helped enhance the movie and make it all the more terrifying because it felt so real. Of course, most of the events in the film are incredibly embellished, but the way that they are made larger than life is subtle, and when things really get out of hand during the climax of the movie, everything that happens makes perfect sense.

5. The Characters

"The Conjuring" is old school ghost hunters at its best, and was filmed in the same vein as "The Changeling," and "The Awakening," where a haunted building is one of the main characters of the movie.

The movie slowly, and cleverly builds the tension, to the point where audience members are pinned to their seats, staring at the screen in terror as events unfold. This slow burn ghost movie does it right. It sets up the main characters, makes them very sympathetic people that you'd expect to meet in real life, and then throws them through an emotion and at times physical wringer as the ghost tears down their defenses one by one.

The ghost hunting duo are based on the real life husband and wife team, The Warrens. Their relationship is built on faith and love, and not in a cheesy, forced way.

The same thing goes for the poor victims of the haunted house, the Perrons. The five girls act the way that you'd expect sisters to be, and even their parents are believable.

"The Conjuring" avoids the cliche of the father being the one possessed by the evil of the home, and makes him a loving protector of his family- which is a refreshing change of pace from haunted house movies that take their cues from "The Amityville Horror" and turn the father into a vessel of rage and violence.

The thing that I liked the most was the fact that the movie cleverly misdirects your perceptions of the characters; the ones that you think are going to be the main victim of the ghost, aren't the ones that are the most affected by it, and that makes for one heck of a scary surprise at the end of the film.

4. Ghost Story Elements

There are several instances in "The Conjuring" that reminded me of ghost stories told around the campfire. A lot of thought was put into the script by the writers, and it's clear that they did thorough research of the source material prior to writing the screenplay.

The most interesting ghost story elements is the haunted music box, complete with its creepy peeping clown, and a swirled mirror (an embellishment that appears to be a signature visual theme of James Wan) that spins while the music plays. When it stops, you can see a ghost standing in the mirror behind you.

The music that the box plays is disjointed, the rhythm is syncopated, and unsettling, with unnatural pauses in the melody. The rhythm of the song creates tension, and really gets you ready to jump at any moment, making you believe that the ghost will pop up while it is still playing, but it doesn't. And that is one thing that the movie does right.

Another ghost story element in "The Conjuring" is the haunted hanging tree, a common trope of ghost stories, where one of the ghosts killed herself.

Then there is a ghost of a maid that committed suicide. She appears to one of the victims during the Warren's investigation and says, something along the lines of "Look what she did to me!" or "Look at what she made me do!", and manages to scare the crap out of the guy she appears to, and the audience as well.

Another ghost story element is the spooky, dark basement with long discarded items that nobody wants.  It even had those steps without the back riser, where you can reach through from underneath the stairs to grab someone's foot when they are walking down them.

The first house that I lived in had basement stairs like that, and I hated going down them, they freaked me out, and there they were, in a scary ghost movie. Thanks a lot James Wan.

The last important ghost story element are the clocks. The clocks in the haunted house stop at the same time every day after the family moves into the haunted house. Ghost stories that feature this element often have the clocks stopping in the middle of the night, around 3:00 am. In the case of "The Conjuring" it's 3:07 am.

Thanks to the director's clever, and subtle use of these ghost story elements, the audience's suspension of disbelief is very rarely shattered during the movie.


3. Staring into Darkness

There are multiple scenes in the movie where both the characters, and the audience, find themselves staring into the darkness, trying to see what menacing, evil presence lurking within. The clever use of light and, more importantly, darkness, creates a wonderful tale of suspense and terror. The ghosts are left mostly in the shadows, and are only shown out of focus in the background of a shot.

The inability of the audience to see what is actually haunting the Perrons allows us to use our imaginations, which makes a scene a heck of a lot more scarier than if everything was shown to us. Many ghost movies don't get this part right. They show too much, too soon, and this ruins whatever scares it is attempting to create. Fortunately for us, "The Conjuring" doesn't fall into that trap.

2. The Set Pieces

The Perron's House

The Perron's house has a menacing feel from the moment they open the front door and movie in. It is full of wide open doorways, dark colors, and blind corners.

The basement is creepy, with several pieces of furniture covered in white sheets that are draped in such a way that they look like they are hiding the silhouettes of people. While it doesn't have a face on it, like the Amityville Horror house, the Perron's house still looks like it is watching, and waiting for its next victim to arrive.

The Hanging Tree

The hanging tree on the property is a dead, menacing presence that looms in the distance. The lake that it sits by is still, and stagnant looking. Water is thought by many to be a conduit for the dead, so it's no wonder that the lake looks like there is nothing living in it. That was done on purpose to add another layer of foreboding dread to the movie.

The Haunted Items Museum

The haunted items museum in the Warren's warm looking home is organized evil. From the arrangement of the items, to its focal point- Annabelle's locked glass display case- we can tell that all of the things that are stored there, no matter how mundane looking, are dangerous items that inhabit menacing, and often deadly spirits.

1. Less is More, Especially for Exorcisms

When the demonic ghost, or demon ghost, or evil ghost (take your pick) possesses one of the main characters, the Warrens are forced to do an emergency exorcism to save the possessed person's life.

The possessed victim attacks two of the children, and the other characters rush to save them. Once they wrestle the girls away, the victim is covered in a blanket (one of the blankets that has been draped over the furniture in the basement for the entire movie) and tied to a chair. You can't see the possessed person's face. This is done on purpose. When the evil entity possessing them is ordered to reveal itself, the sheet tears open and you can see only one half of their face. By not fully revealing the body of the possessed during the exorcism, your mind is allowed to conjure an image of what is happening to them, while you are assaulted by terrifying sounds and the pained screams of the innocent victim. This makes the exorcism scene absolutely bone chilling.

The entire movie holds the premise that less is more and that is what makes it an effective, and terrifying ghost film.

I also think that it's important to note that "The Conjuring" is rated R and yet, there is no foul language, no excessive gore or bloodshed. There isn't even any torture porn, even though the director James Wan is known for using them in his Saw movies, (you know, the franchise that made him famous in the horror movie world). Much like "Don't be Afraid of the Dark," the movie is rated R because it's so scary.

If you like subtle, realistic ghost movies that will creep under your skin and scare you half to death, you'll love "The Conjuring."