American Mary
Directors : Jen & Sylvia Soska
USA, 2012
People like what they already know. I remember talking to someone years ago who told me that they would only listen to music that they already liked, that way they would never waste their time on something that might be rubbish. Reading some of the review responses to American Mary brings that guy back to mind.
It's nothing at all to see women tortured, raped, hunted, mutilated, humiliated or worse in horror films. It's practically the standard procedure; the helpless young attractive woman is set upon by the evil men (who we know are evil because of some sort of deformity) or the evil creature. What isn't often seen is the woman take control, make her own decisions and her own destiny and take a slow and painful revenge upon those who have so badly wronged her. When you do show that, it seems that some people get upset.
American Mary is a gorgeous film, not only for the sensational Katharine Isabelle and her sensuous outfits, but for the muted colours that can make even a worn and rusted fridge seem glamorous. The details are everything, such as the baseball bat Mary sleeps with after her first surgery; all wrapped up in a luxurious blanket she grips this amazing bat which is chipped and broken and battered. Any bat might have done for the limited dramatic purpose it serves, but this film is also about finding beauty in the unconventional, and especially in the altered.
Mary's initial behind-closed-doors surgical involvements are all induced by financial reward, and the first two have her coming home an emotional mess, crying, vomiting. As time goes on she seems more motivated by a sense of herself as an artist, a creative force for people who want to express themselves in extreme ways. In between there is of course the rape, and it's a particularly unpleasant scene to watch. The Soska sisters pull no punches. Rape in horror has often been an exploitative interlude, a chance to show some flesh rather than a part of the overall horror. Rape is not a trivial thing, and here the squirming awfulness of it goes a little way to redress the balance. We see it from Mary's point of view, with little of the doctor actually visible on screen during it. This is again a reversal of how these scenes are normally done, with the man filling the bulk of the camera and the woman a helpless rag underneath. Monica Belucci's scene in 'Irreversible' is perhaps the only more forceful potrayal that springs instantly to mind.
Following the rape, Mary's sense of how things work and what she is going to tolerate are completely redefined. Money is no longer important; she tosses the $5000 she earned from the surgery back at Billy to secure the capture of Dr Grant. She has quit medical school, now she is on her own looking after herself. The change is reflected in her relationship to Billy, who increasingly comes to fear her after initially feeling power over her, and who increasingly comes to love her after initially seeing her as another object.
How does Mary feel about Billy? While he fantasises about her, she remains cold, at one point putting down her definition of their connection by saying that if he wanted to see her he must have a job for her, what other reason would there be? But there is some relationship all the same - she almost kills the stripper she finds with him. They are both people on a downward spiral that can't end well, not necessarily bad, not necessarily good, but definitely caught up in circumstances that they didn't plan. He offers Mary a new life running away together to LA, and Mary says she'll think about it, but we know from her familiar tone that it's the same brush-off voice she gives to Beatress. Their exchange outside of the hospital is actually one of the great little moments of the film; Isabelle's perfect delivery of jaded sarcasm in tones of cheerful politeness is hilarious. The rejection of, or non-committal to, this new life seals her into the downard spiral and the fate that awaits, and we have only to wait for the journey home for that fate to arrive.
That leads us to one of the more justified criticisms of American Mary; that of the ending. You will hear that it is rushed, that it is tacked on, that it seems there was no real idea of how to end the film, and these are all accurate. I'm not a fan of the flashback to fill in the plot for people who weren't able to get it, but in this case it's actually necessary. The husband who appeared for 25 seconds halfway through the film and was never seen again? He's turned up and is the killer? Well... ok. Even in the dramatic role of final-scene killer he is underwhelming as the guy who falls on his own knife and then rolls out of shot.
We end with independent Mary again, she's a surgeon so she's going to stitch up her own wounds as a final act of defiance. The scene is overlooked by the police officer who visited her earlier and said he didn't want her to become another sad story. She has, but not in the way he originally thought. Mary wouldn't go down as the quiet victim, far from it.
Is Mary justified in her revenge? Can it be described as justice that her rapist ends up hanging from meat hooks with his mouth sewn shut, his arms and legs cut off and 'LIAR' burned into his forehead in elaborate script? She also brutally murders the security guard who discovers her. Does this matter? We have the feeling throughout that Mary doesn't really care for anything, not her bird that isn't treated with great affection and isn't seen again until it is carried out by the police following her death, not even really for her grandmother with whom she has attention-on-other-things conversations. The most sympathetic character ends up being Lance the hired goon, whose mother was murdered by an intruder in his youth. Lance, Mary and Billy form a little disfunctional family, living out murky moral lives whose trajectories are not really controlled, they are almost people who have given up life. This is a film that is happy to present alternative moralities, sexualities and motivations, and that is always refreshing in the modern horror setting which has become firmly entrenched in teen date movie hell.
If you're of the traditional alpha male variety, American Mary may make for the most uncomfortable cinematic experience since Hard Candy, but why should that be worthy of criticism when it is actually far milder than something like Wolf Creek, to take just one of countless examples of unending horror and violence against women? There are always two sides to a story, and this one has been answered with beauty and a wicked sense of humour. American Mary can sit alongside The Human Caterpillar and VHS as rare examples of original life in staid modern horror. It isn't perfect, but neither are you.