Netflix Review: American Mary (2013)

This week's Netflix Review is a movie from 2013 that we never sat down and watched all the way through until just now. We don't know why we kept putting it off over and over again (we've had a copy in our hands for well over a year), but it wasn't until a recent search of Netflix that we finally said "You know what, we need to watch this right now."

American Mary was at the top of many "Best Of" lists in 2013, and many people have hailed it as a modern-day classic of sorts.

Classic or not, this is exactly the kind of movie that makes Netflix such a cool thing to have.

Mary Mason is a "far too sexy to be a surgeon" medical student, who is struggling to pay her bills while studying her ass off, and as all sexy medical students do, she resorts to stripping to earn money to survive. During her "interview" at the club, the owner tells her that if she comes to the basement, she can "earn" herself a quick $5000. All she has to do for the money, is perform some illegal surgery on a guy who's been tortured, and save his life. Needless to say, she's all for it.

American Sexy.

A few days later, Mary is approached by a creepy bitch named Beatress, who has had a bunch of surgeries to make her look like a retarded version of Betty Boop. Beatress offers Mary $10k to meet with her equally freakish-looking friend, Ruby Realgirl; Ruby wants to have her nipples and meat curtains removed, so that she too can look like a living doll out of my deepest nightmares. Of course Mary does this odd job as well, because, why not.

Mental illness is a real thing, people.

When some of the Doctors at her Hospital invite her to a party, where they drug and rape her(because men are evil), Mary calls on her club owner friend to help her kidnap the offending creeper, so that she can fuck him up real good with a scalpel. And saws. And a bunch of other surgical instruments.

A back-alley root canal is always a good place to start when seeking revenge against a rapist.

From here on out, Mary quits school and decides to become an underground surgeon instead. I guess the moral of this story is "why go to school and end up getting raped when you can just do illegal Body Mod surgery on the mentally ill." I don't know.

I won't spoil the ending for you here, but I will say that we still have no clue what the title American Mary even means.

Bitch don't play.

American Mary is a really engaging movie that made us laugh as much as it did flinch. I mean, it's obviously not a movie that is steeped in much reality, and a lot of it is just too damned bizarre to take seriously, but as an escapist rumination on revenge, it works perfectly.

Whether the story and it's odd characters do anything for you or not, you can't ignore the fact that the Soska Sisters directed the hell out of this one. It not only looks and feels like a slick, Hollywood production, but the no one in the cast feels out of place or out of their depth. American Mary may have had some dialogue and story issues that didn't thrill us, but everything else was on point.

If anyone doubts the acting skill of Katharine Isabelle, they should really see American Mary. She's fantastic in this, and to be honest, had any other actress played the title role, we may not have enjoyed it as much. She truly owns this movie, and she does so effortlessly. We really don't understand why she doesn't get more high profile roles, because there doesn't seem to be much that she can't handle on screen.

Worst stripper ever.

Everything was gong so well right up until the point where Mary did a complete 180, and instantly became a vengeful murderess. Maybe she was mentally unstable to begin with, and being traumatized finally pushed her over the edge, but we got no realistic transitional period to convinced us that her transformation was genuine.

I mean the first half of the movie was great (aside from some of the quirky bits), but around the halfway mark, the movie turned into an entirely different animal. We liked what it turned into, but it just felt as if it didn't fit perfectly with what had come before. Maybe we just liked Mary more when she was actually sympathetic.

GHB is a hell of a drug.

The whole Body Mod thing is absolutely lost on us as well. I will never understand how disfiguring ones self equates to showing the world who they truly are. The quirkiness of the twins, the fake Betty Boop, the woman who wanted to be a living doll... it was all just a bit much. Had they lost some of the goofier elements of the movie, it would have been better off. 

We get that American Mary had to play quirky and odd to be able to tell its story, but couldn't it have been just a tiny bit more realistic, or at least not so unrealistic?

What happened to you as a child?

Rape, plenty of instances of Body Bod surgery and its aftermath, a stabbing, some tazing, a good and hearty bludgeoning, plenty of torture... American Mary is one visceral, and violent flick, even though it doesn't get crazy gratuitous about it.

"Don't taze me, ho!"

We get a few topless girls in this one, but most of the sexuality in this one is implied or played down. Also, Katharine Isabelle, though she doesn't get naked, looks sexy as hell in most of the scenes that she's in. Girl's just got it like that.

Not really digging the bangs, but that's just us.

Few women wear a leather apron as well as Katharine Isabelle. Also, any girl who has an intimate relationship with a turkey is not well in the head.

She really loved that turkey.

American Mary may have its share of issues, but the fact is that it's a bold and enjoyable movie that we just couldn't help but love. Mostly. The fact that it's on Netflix is reason enough for any Horror fan with Netflix to sit down and give it a go, although we have to imagine that it looks gorgeous on Blu-ray. Netflix or not, if you haven't seen this one yet, you really need to add it to your short list asap.

B+

American Mary is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD, and as of right now, it's streaming free on Netflix.

Katharine Isabelle is the hottest thing to come out of Canada since maple syrup! Wait, is maple syrup even a Canadian thing? If not, then we'll go with Bryan Adams, because he was awesome.

Netflix Review: The Seasoning House (2013)

It's not very often that a movie comes along that disturbs us to the point where we find it difficult to watch; Baby Blues (2008), Martyrs, A Serbian Film, In my Skin, The Girl Next Door, Inside... it's usually movies like that which include graphic torture, realistic abuse, or violence against kids, that truly get to us.

The Seasoning House contains all three of those things, and it was most definitely a tough watch.

Torture Porn is probably our least favorite sub-genre in Horror, mainly because we prefer to have fun with, or get the shit scared out of us by the movies we watch.

Excessive violence, especially that which is more realistic in nature, never really equals "fun" to us. As long as said violence is surrounded by a solid movie that has something else to offer us though, we can live with it. We may flinch a lot, but we can live with it.

Angel is a sweet young girl who witnesses her family being killed by Soldiers, is taken by those Soldiers and sold to a local whorehouse, and then is told that she's not good enough to be a whore because she's deaf, dumb, and has an odd birthmark on her face. To add further insult to injury, she is put to work by her skeezy Pimp, drugging the other girls, "making them pretty" for the scumbag customers, and then cleaning them up after they've been beaten and raped... This girl just can not catch any sort of break, whatsoever.

All she ever wanted to do was sit and watch whatever was on TV in whatever Eastern Bloc Country she came from.

It's no wonder that Angel climbs through the walls and crawlspaces of the whorehouse at night, because by this point she's probably insane and thinks that she's escaping somehow. She ends up making friends with one of the other girls, which really lifts her spirits... until the squad of Soldiers from the beginning of the movie return for some "fun." When said fun ends with Angel's new gal pal being raped and killed, she loses her shit and starts killing people.

Friends 'til the end... which is in about 20 minutes from now.

Will Angel survive in the walls long enough to escape the whorehouse of doom? Will anyone help her, anyone at all? Can a small child ever hope to single-handedly kill a squad of well-trained, violent Soldiers? Far be it from us to spoil anything for you here, but suffice it to say that answer to all of those questions is "yes, but..."

Things get messy.

The Seasoning House is a bleak, dire, depressing, and revolting movie, that is at the same time gorgeous, intense, and oddly inspiring in a way. If you can stomach its heavy subject matter and horrifying visuals, this is one well-made and effective movie to experience. I say experience, because watching this movie truly was one.

This one starts off as a grim Horror offering and then segues into a revenge Thriller almost effortlessly, and by the end, we're not only hoping for Angel to be able to survive her ordeal, but we're rooting for her to kill every sick bastard that has it coming to them. This movie may not be for everyone, but those folks that it is geared towards should enjoy its pacing and turn of events.

Be warned though: The Seasoning House is full of scenes involving rape and violence against women, and there will be a lot of people out there who will have a very hard time sitting through them. Proceed with caution.

We have to give serious kudos here to Rosie Day, for having the wherewithal to tackle such a tough role at the age of what, 17? That's some pretty heavy subject matter for a girl so young to not only comprehend, but to convey to an audience in such a convincing manner. She played her role here deftly, making us truly feel her character's plight, and making us believe that the things she was doing were entirely possible. Oh yeah, and she did all of this without uttering one line of dialogue.

Give her time, she'll be huge.

We had to suspend our disbelief to be able to accept that a timid, demure, slip of a girl like Angel could kill a squad of highly-trained, rough, violent Soldiers like she did. The film made that scenario fairly plausible for the most part, but it was still a bit of a rough pill to swallow.

I don't think that I could stab this guy to death, let alone a little girl.

Shit like this really happens to women and young girls all over the world, and that is about as horrendous as it gets. No jokes, no quips, that type of shit is just abominable.

He's obviously a real tough guy.

This movie is all sorts of violent and bloody: we get girls being beaten and raped; people being stabbed; throats being slit; plenty of gun violence, a smashed face... and because of the dirty, realistic settings throughout the movie, the violence feel very authentic.

Yeah, shit goes down in this one.

Though the movie is about young girls being forced into prostitution, there is no female nudity here at all; and given the film's subject matter, we're absolutely fine with that. We do get some male nudity, and plenty of sexual scenes and situations, but The Seasoning House just isn't graphic in "that" way.

In a cheesy slasher flick, we'd find her sexy. Not here though.

Pimpin' ain't easy. Also, being a young girl in certain parts of the world is even less easy.

Kill 'em all, baby. Kill 'em all.

The goal of any film should be to affect its audience in some profound way, and The Seasoning House did exactly that with us. This is not so much an "enjoyable" movie, as it is a really good movie that tested our resolve, and plucked our frigging nerves like guitar strings. If the grittier offerings of the film world are your thing, then this is one movie that you should definitely check out. If not, we won't judge you for giving it a pass.

B+

The Seasoning House is available now on Blu-ray, DVD, VOD, and as of right now, it's streaming free on Netflix.

After enduring a bleak and gruesome movie like The Seasoning House, we need a few pretty, smiling faces to make us feel less traumatized... that first pic makes us immediately feel better about what we just saw.