American Mary (2012) by The Soska Sisters

Director: Jenn Soska, Sylvia Soska (as The Soska Sisters)
Year: 2012
Country: Canada
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Psycho/Thriller

Plot:
Desperate to make ends meet, a promising surgeon ends up taking a one-off job as an extreme body modifier, only to find that her skills and success in the field draws her into the world even further and becomes increasingly concerned about leaving with her sanity the more dangerous they get.

Review:

This here was quite fun if somewhat disappointing and rather troubling effort. One of the main problems here is the rather overt and extremely clumsy manner in which this one goes about integrating her into the cosmetics field here, which is one of the central parts of the film as a whole. The way in which she gets put into society, initially as a freak occurrence at a job interview that requires her to take the offer for an extreme cosmetic offer at the last second, which by itself is quite a coincidence that is purposefully built into this one for no real reason other than giving her something to get her into the world required here only that's incredibly clunky and ham-fisted by tying it more into the strip club than the medical school.

On the whole, this is a facet that makes more sense than how it plays out here as that's quite a clumsy read which brings about quite a bit more useless moments here detailing her in the club than it really should knowing how this one really plays out. Moreover, that makes for quite a lot more bland and overall unneeded moments here where we follow her around and generally aren't that impressed with what happens as it's a series of scenes with her simply brooding over what she's done and turning herself into, and all of this is so flimsy and shallow that it really makes her gradual turn into a serial killer and butcher seem all the weaker due to how over-the-top silly it all appears.

This one really could've made the build-up into that section of the film quite a bit more appealing since the character-study aspect of her turning away from her schooling to a more lucrative and appreciative society would've turned this one around considerably as the gradual turn into becoming a body modifier becomes coherent and realistic rather than just simply to get off on showing all the crazy procedures dreamed up to disfigure the human body which is what this one really feels like. That aspect is well-handled with plenty of rather gruesome and somewhat intriguing displays of her work as she goes along and starts gaining notoriety, being able to showcase the work she does rather well with plenty of graphic images about the different surgeries and what's going on with her descent into madness as that becomes part of what's going on giving it rather bloody and disturbing which marks the film's best parts. Still, its quite sizeable flaws really bring this one down.

Overview: ***/5

A generally enjoyable psychological character study that does have some issues, there's still a lot to like here that manages to hold this one up over those issues. Those who are fans of this style and are intrigued by the concept or follow the creative crew will have a lot to like here while those that don't appreciate these factors should heed caution.

This review ran as part of our 2023 Women in Horror Month celebrations. Click the banner below to check out the rest of our month-long celebrations including various reviews and interviews: