Dead Mary (2007)

Written by Peter Sheldrick and Christopher Warre Smets
Featuring Dominique Swain, Maggie Castle, Michael Majeski, Steve McCarthy, and Reagan Pasternack, Marie Josee Colburn
2007

Dead Mary is an anomaly; it's well-acted and has good special effects, but the plot is so marvelously retarded that there's simply no way to enjoy this film. With Dominique Swain heading up the cast, it was initially odd that this film was a straight-to-video. Well, now we know. It's just plain bad. What sucks the most is that the Urban Legend of Bloody Mary (you know, you look in the mirror of a dark bathroom with nothing but a candle or a flashlight and say 'Bloody Mary' three times) is used so poorly. It's a cool idea for a film (you know, like when they used in Urban Legends: Bloody Mary which came out last year), but in Dead Mary you never even get to see this angry female spirit. Instead, what we get is a strange allegory for romantic relationships gone awry due to cheating and dishonesty. Great. Just what I needed.

Kim (Dominique Swain) and her long-time friends (I can't possibly remember their names) head up to a cabin in the woods for a weekend getaway. (I know, original). Kim and her boyfriend have just broken up, so the weekend might be kinda awkward. Also, her two other friends (The Dyke-y one and The Blond One) seem to be having romance troubles of their own. The men, consisting of Kim's boyfriend, the Blond One's Husband (AKA the Frat Boy) and the Curly Haired Dude kick back with some beers and open up about their relationships to their female companions. It's touching. The Curly Haired Dude has brought along his Younger Girlfriend who doesn't quite fit in with the group, but they all try to be nice and play a round of truth or dare while drinking it up. Truth or dare gets boring, however, and they start playing Dead Mary. You mean Bloody Mary, don't you? No, explains the Dyke-y One. This is like Bloody Mary but even worse! So they all challenge each other to go in the bathroom and call upon the spirit of Dead Mary. Which they do, in turns. That gets boring too, and soon they all go to sleep. Then the plot completely collapses. Kim's boyfriend goes outside in the woods to follow up on a strange ruckus he heard out there, all by himself. So does The Younger Girlfriend, who decides to take a midnight swim in the swamp, by herself. Then, the Boyfriend is dead and the Younger Girlfriend is screaming about how the Dyke-y One killed him in the woods. What? Exactly.

From this point on the film is a 'You're the monster!' 'No, You're the monster!' finger-pointing exercise for the characters. Stealing the premise directly out of The Thing (Carpenter's version, let's say, because its more fun) Dead Mary is about demonic possession that makes you A) Kill People and B) Confess to infidelities and accuse those around you of being unfaithful in their romantic relationships. Which, according to this script, are comparably bad things. There are fork-stabbings, knife and gun wounds, burnt corpses, zombie-like creatures who prophesy death and doom for their killer, shovel decapitations, and some really tryingly stupid dialogue. The effects are pretty awesome and cringe worthy.

Unfortunately, Dominique Swain seems to have gotten herself lost in a mess of a horror film, and the director seems to have made a mish-mash of the writer's story, which already had holes the size of a Thai hooker's vagina. But the real culprit here might be the wackos in the editing room. The movie is badly paced and it seems like there's something missing: footage, perhaps? Were there necessary scenes that were taken out due to time constraints? Due to excessive gore? We'll never know, but its clear that even the people who made the movie didn't think it was worthy of a theatrical release.

Dead Mary herself never shows up. Almost everyone dies gruesomely. Kim recovers her feminist self-respect and realizes she don't need no man, and we learn that relationships suck. We knew that last part already. Did we really need to learn the aforementioned lessons? I say no. Dominique fans will enjoy the sarcastic bitchy Dominique, but there's nothing more to this movie than a few moments of false scares and a couple scenes of bowel-breaking gore. Good luck.