In the world of independent horror, we are currently in the season of the fearsome females. In the last month alone we have had Black Rock, with its trio of hunted women fighting back against the men who stalk them, and Alyce Kills, a brutal little ditty about a petite, spunky slacker who can cleave bodies as well as Jason Voorhees. Bringing up the rear with arguably the most defiantly feminist slant of the bunch, is the Soska Sisters American Mary, a grim fable about a down-on-her-luck med student who finds her way into the bizarre profession of body modification.
Coming off a cult debut with the unpretentious title of Dead Hooker in a Trunk, the ‘Twisted Twins’ Jena and Sylvia Soska delve into darkness with the adorable Katherine Isabelle as their deranged heroine, Mary Mason, who we meet sewing up turkeys while ‘The First Cut is the Deepest’ plays in the background. Mason is a med student who shows great aptitude and garners respect, but like most protagonists in the post-recession movie universe, she’s got financial issues. Mary takes a strip club job to grab the extra cash, but when her skills as a surgeon come in handy for sewing up torture victims in the club’s seedy basement, she finds herself on the road to bigger, bloodier things.
When the Soskas introduce Mary to Beatress, a pop idol that’s transformed herself into a living impressionist painting of Betty Boop, complete with altered voice and 1950’s fashion, the movie takes a strange but illuminating detour into the current trend of body modification as self-actualization. Now Mary’s finally exercising her medical ambitions to heal in a counter-intuitive way; by mutilating and altering the flesh of her patients, she’s also giving them a sense of spiritual freedom and fulfillment.
These passages are every bit as perverse as they sound, but the Soska’s develop a tasteful, almost classical approach to the mise en scene and edit the surgeries in ways that reduce their shock and repellent nature. Appearing themselves as lesbian twins who want to swap left arms, the sisters also seem to have real compassion and respect for the wayward souls who look to body modification as a means of gaining control on lives they feel have been whisked away from them. How else to explain someone like Ruby Realgirl, a woman who’s decided that she wants the neutered asexual body of a Barbie Doll, including removal of any feminine sexual identifiers? This sits less well with Ruby’s husband, but that’s part of this strange world Mary has become embroiled in; as she gives some of these people what they want, the social status quo comes crashing back down on her head. For Mary, this whiplash is most brutally felt when one of her professors (David Lovgren) drugs and then rapes her.
After this violation, that sends Mary spiraling into a madness that shatters her spirit more completely than any of the bodies broken here, the movie itself leaps right off the rails. Or, rather, it heads off the rails and into the wilderness, seemingly of its own volition. When Mary starts turning from harried, ambitious student to vengeful, calculating monster, I had no doubt this was the trajectory that the Soska’s planned from the idea’s inception. Ultimately, it feels like the wrong call; the unusual microcosm introduced takes a back seat for a more dour, fetishistic revenge scenario. That Mary dons shoulder-length rubber gloves, and S&M friendly smocks and leggings doesn’t help us take any of this seriously as drama.
Sure, there’s a limited amount of on-screen violence (which was also technically true of the original Human Centipede film) but the way it’s handled feels just as icky and bloody boring. There’s no sympathy to feel for Mary once she starts unveiling her master plans for her captured teacher, who has plenty of teeth-filing, tongue-splitting, wang-cutting fun in store for him. The correlation between Lovgren’s own misogynistic intentions and Mary’s feminist vengeance isn’t belabored, but it feels insubstantial given the ghoulishness on display; his act was planned to sculpt Mary’s life as surely as hers will his, but the nastiness overwhelms the metaphor.
As a film, American Mary becomes too flat and aggressive to retain much of its initial power, but Katherine Isabelle was exactly the right choice for Mary, and she’s so committed and at ease in the role that she almost musters the film a recommendation; almost, but not quite. Ever since the edgy Canadian gem Ginger Snaps, where she donned a wolfie snout and wagging tail, Isabelle has been something of an on-again, off-again staple of the genre. Here, she’s playing the monster in another horror film, but her approach is calibrated differently, and we see the idealistic med student, the desperate stripper, and the spurned, broken murderer coalescing subtly into one ‘modified’ being. It’s a truly inspired turn that deserves a better script and movie than American Mary, although if there’s anything to take away it’s that both the Soskas and Isabelle have the talent and tenacity necessary to make one.
American Mary is now playing on VOD and in limited release.