American Mary

Once in a while, a mould-breaking horror movie signals the arrival of a unique talent: doubly so in this case, since this bracingly perverse ‘body modification’ tale was made by Canadian twins Jen and Sylvia Soska, aka the Twisted Sisters. When her medical studies are ended by a trauma that shatters her life and career, Mary (Katharine Isabelle) finds herself moonlighting as the surgeon of choice for ‘body mod’ extremists such as Ruby Realgirl (Paula Lindberg), who seeks doll-like perfection by having all traces of her sexuality sliced off. Mary is then befriended by surgically altered Betty Boop-lookalike Beatress Johnson (Tristan Risk), embraced by the marginal ‘body mod’ community and empowered to take scalpel-wielding revenge on Dr Grant (David Lovgren), the man who destroyed her dreams. Unlike the Twisted Sisters’ derivative fan-girl debut, ‘Dead Hooker in a Trunk’ (2009), this sexy, scalpel-sharp feminist horror movie is driven by credible, fleshed-out characters and scarily seductive ideas. ‘American Mary’ nods savvily to the ‘body horror’ of ‘Audition’ and ‘Dead Ringers’ but still possesses a truly original, deeply disturbing vision.