American Mary

Rarely is a film so clumsily stitched together as in the surgical freak fest American Mary. Med school costing an arm and a leg, young Mary strikes out on her own as an underground body modification surgeon with a taste for torture. A logical career move, as apparently every other working surgeon in Seattle is a sadistic rapist. Katharine Isabelle, a fixture in Canadian horror, makes all the wrong choices as Mary; shrugging off early scenes with quirky aloofness before finally giving up completely on her Livejournal entry of a character. Tastelessness would be fine, if either Isabelle or writer/director twins, the Soska sisters, would actually colour outside the lines. Instead, American Mary is a botched dismemberment lacking any themes, story or point. An extravagant failure, whose worst sin is believing itself capable of pushing even the slightest of boundaries. —Jacob Boon