American Mary is billed as a movie about a medic who turns her back on the medical establishment and becomes involved in underground surgery for paying customers, who wish to have surgery the establishment would refuse. For obvious reasons as its mainly for shallow aesthetic reasons.It is well known that there are groups of people who demand surgery to change their appearance for any number of reasons but standing in their way is a medical establishment which refuses on ethical grounds. Why remove healthy tissue for aesthetic reasons? It seems that this wish fulfilment of a trained surgeon who will perform this type of surgery on demand, if you are rich enough, resulted in the character of Mary. She is basically a body-mod kinksters dream come true. It it doesn't take long for us to see the movie for what it is. It's a thinly veiled revenge movie against the medical establishment, most likely because they refuse to get involved with surgery this scene, where the supposed hero is much worse than her prey. The writers and directors the Soska twins, who I have never heard of before this movie, look like the cheeky girls at a goth disco. They turn up, assault a dancer for no reason then ask to have their bodyparts swapped for no sensible reason, other than they think it will be cool and they are rich enough to pay for it. This tells you pretty much what you need to know about the writers of this movie. There is the theme in this movie that wishing to use surgery to change your appearance is somehow leftfield or subcultural, however plastic surgery is now so mainstream celebrities don't even bother to conceal the fact they have had it. The only difference seems to be style. Most people by adulthood will realise that by dressing in back or adopting a subcultural dress code doesn't make people individualistic, especially when that subculture all look the same. If anything, they look more conformist in their uniforms.The movie seems to send quite a shallow message which is wearing black is cool, pointless violence is cool, swearing is cool, being rich is cool and prolonged torture is cool as long as its revenge. However, for revenge films to work properly the revenge has to be proportional. In this case its not. She is by far the worst person in the movie, however we are supposed to believe she is a good person because she still chats to her grandmother on the phone? That doesn't quite balance out against the sadism. As a result you don't care what happens to her.There are very few movies which deal with body modification which could have made this an interesting project. The movie seems to focus on the trendy for some fetish scene of body modification and is very shallow as a result. There didn't seem to be a mention of the well-known phenomena of people who wish to have healthy limbs removed and will risk death to achieve this outcome. There is surprisingly very little debate in this movie about the ethics of people who wish to have serious modifications of healthy tissue and the medical professions rejection of these procedures. The ridiculousness of some of the procedures in the movie beggars belief, but because Maybe this is why the bad guys are medics and Mary gets to torture them?This movie will likely only appeal to a mostly teenage subculture audience who already have an interest in body modification, which is very very few people. The problem with movies which focus on specific fetishes is they have a very narrow appeal. Unless you get off on bodymod stuff, which I suspect where most of the high ratings for this movie comes from, you may have a better use for your time.

The thing that annoys me most about the internet is that weirdo losers living in their mom's basement can stand in judgment of absolute brilliance. Anyone who gave this film a bad review is a complete and utter jackass. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but if you didn't like this film then yours is just wrong. The Soska Sisters have done it again, and with endorsements of their genius by such horror luminaries as Clive Barker, Eli Roth, and Daniel Schaffer I cannot for the life of me understand how anyone could not recognize the importance of this motion picture within a genre with so traditionally bereft of great offerings. Whatever kind of crack you're smoking perhaps you should share it with the rest of us so that we might, too, become so blissfully ignorant about the world around us. Here's an idea: shave off your stupid chin beard, lay off the Fritos, get out in the sun once in a while, and stop judging the innovative and refreshingly unique perspective of artists who are out there doing amazing stuff when you clearly know @#?! all about the creative process, writing, filmmaking, and perhaps, most importantly, the female experience. Just a thought.

Yes, it's Halloween. Apart from fobbing all my past-it's-best-before-date confectionery onto hapless trick or treaters, and jumping out from behind corners to try to give old people heart attacks. I've seen an alleged scary movie. And you're reading the review of it right now. Go you.It's all about this lady, see? She's in training to be a surgeon. After being assaulted at a party by her lecturer, she decides to chop his arms and legs off. Now THAT'S vengeance. Then she quits medical school, and becomes exclusively involved with performing body modifications on the weirdos in our society. Including: A girl who literally wants to become a Living Doll, two sisters who want to exchange their left arms as a sign of their closeness(?) and a dude who fancies a crack at looking like Beelzebub himself... Horns and all. It LOOKS good, but I thinks his dreams of working the till at his local Co-op are well and truly shattered.Will you want to avert your eyes on a few occasions, at the sight of split tongues, severed limbs and more blood gushing out than you'd find in a vampire's larder? Probably. But are there any moments, where you feel the hair prickle on the back of your neck, as something unknown creeps around the darkness, ready to strike...? Nope. It's all rather dull, with our heroine interacting with some not-quite-interesting characters, before getting busy with her operating table for long, drawn out procedures. Not too much of note happens, apart from the repetitive presence of REAL LIFE freaks as extras showing off their mutilations. Nice, guys.As for the ending... It must have been early opening time at the pub that day, as it seems such a arbitrary afterthought that even using the term tacked-on doesn't do it justice. It's all a little lightweight, and will soon be forgotten by the OTHER horror film I plan to watch tonight before beddy byes.OOPS, gotta go there's another knock at my door.. Now where did I put that Xmas 2011 candy... 4/10

Modern imitation of some of David Cronenbergs' filmography is nonetheless interesting and watchable on its own terms. It's really more of a drama than a horror film, with touches of gore and dark comedy, and is slow paced enough that it may have some viewers fumbling for their remotes. It plunges the audience into a world of sordid and off putting characters in a tale of sex and fetishism. Ultimately, it works its way towards a somewhat conventional finish, but getting there is still an amusing enough experience.The lovely Katharine Isabelle, best known for her role as Ginger in the "Ginger Snaps" series, stars as Mary, a promising med student in desperate need of cash. So she accepts the offer from nightclub owner Billy (Antonio Cupo) to patch up a mangled associate of his. This leads to offers from other people, people who are into radical body modification, to perform a variety of "underground surgery". As Mary is immersed in this world more and more, it really takes a toll on her well-being.If it weren't for Ms. Isabelle, who looks extremely sexy in a variety of outfits, this would have been a little harder to get through. She delivers an engaging lead performance, and is believable throughout Mary's personality arc. It is fun to see Mary take her new business so seriously that she dismisses one potential patient who's willing to settle for something as mundane as piercings. And we do get to see a number of individuals who've had some pretty nasty things done to themselves.Some people may want to note that at least the gore in this movie is serving the story and never *becoming* the whole reason for its existence. The effects are generally well done.Sibling directors Jen and Sylvia Soska (who also cameo in "American Mary" as the German twins) do have some potential, so it will be intriguing to watch the progress of their careers.Six out of 10.