torrascotia 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.

magorman 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.

Steve B I am giving this film a high rating for the creativity of the plot, story, and sets. I would call it slick and sexy. Katharine I. did a great job....probably on those hotist lists after this flick.This horror story is obscure and almost fun except for all the gore. Most horror flicks just stick to that. This one is a revenge horror film too aside from the other obscure aspects. I think the Soska sisters may be a pair to watch after seeing this. At least for this genre.Skipped through some of the more graphic scenes actually, they were just too much for us.

brchthethird While this dark, twisted thriller delivers some great gross-out moments, it ultimately falters under the weight of its own sadism and is seriously let down by sub-par acting and some scattershot plotting. First off, I should say that overall I did enjoy the film. It kind of works as body horror, and the premise of body modification surgery allows for some fairly gruesome and grotesque sequences. However, this concept is never really allowed to cohere into a compelling story. The overall narrative deals with a broke medical student, Mary, who goes into the world of body modification surgery to make some extra money. That in itself is fine, but the way in which she's motivated to begin this work is rather cliché, becomes a half-ignored subplot and is then resolved in a rather mundane, anti-climactic way. The movie seems more interested in showing how weird it can be than really telling a story. Another problem with the film is the acting, because nobody (the lead included) really delivers a good performance. Some things I liked about the film was the rather eclectic soundtrack, which included dubstep, electronic pop and classical music. There was also one scene in particular, which takes place in a bathroom, that really stood out as building effective tension and conveying a sense of claustrophobia and fear. Also, the sequences where Mary does her body modification thing were (mostly) tastefully done. Overall, it's an OK movie but the experience is cheapened by poor acting, a muddled and poorly resolved plot and often taking itself too seriously. For me, a better movie that's similar to this would be EXCISION, although this wasn't bad enough to not necessarily recommend.