American Mary (2012)

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 HALLOWEEN REVIEWS 2022


Directors / Writers: Jen Soska & Sylvia Soska

Stars: Katherine Isabelle, David Lovgren, Antonio Cupo, Tristan Risk, Paula Lindberg, Clay St. Thomas, John Emmet Tracy



A destitute medical student (Katherine Isabelle), brutalized by one of her teachers (David Lovgren), leaves school and becomes a sought-after practitioner in the shady world of underground body modification.

 


At first, she is horrified by the situation she has fallen into, but she soon embraces it and displays the full range of her personality—sexy, brilliant, and dangerous.

 


For a while, I was puzzled that she seemed to be so good at major surgeries so quickly, but the scene that reveals how she got her practice provides one of the best shocks in the movie.

 


The way the main character is presented is kind of brilliant. 



Isabelle has enough charisma that my natural inclination was to sympathize with her.

 


The Soska sisters also provide ample justification for her to slip into the dark world she inhabits, and they don’t spare the suffering she endures on the way there.

 


Ultimately, she is revealed as a person who is capable of atrocities that are worse than the crimes committed against her, but she never lost my sympathy or my hope that she would find a way through her nightmare.






















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