Director: Jen Soska, Sylvia Soska

Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Antonio Cupo, Tristan Risk

Synopsis: The allure of easy money sends Mary Mason, a medical student, into the world of underground surgeries which ends up leaving more marks on her than her so called “freakish” clients.

In the Soska sisters’ American Mary, Debt-ridden medical student Mary Mason (Katharine Isabelle – Ginger Snaps) stumbles upon a lucrative means of earning extra cash when she’s called upon to perform emergency surgery on a torture victim while being interviewed for a position as a lap dancer. This impromptu op draws her into the world of body modification after she’s tracked down by a woman who’s been operated on to look like Betty Boop (Tristan Risk) and wants Mary to operate on a friend who wants her nipples removed (don’t ask). This proves to be the movie’s more interesting strand, but it serves only to facilitate Mary’s particularly grisly revenge on the lecturer who drugs and rapes her. I think we can all agree that rape is a particularly vile crime, but it can hardly justify the truly horrific revenge Mary visits upon her rapist, and we kind of lose our sympathy for her once we discover just how insanely vindictive she is. The idea seems to be that even normal people have the capacity for madness which is only triggered if the right set of circumstances comes along. There are no likeable characters in American Mary, and it mostly makes for disturbing – if compelling in a car-crash sort of way – viewing. The best scene takes place in a ladies toilet, and features no gore and little violence – which perhaps indicates that the movie fails in most other areas.

(Reviewed 4th November 2014)