Sylvia and Jen Soska’s contemporary cult classic American Mary (2012) is one of the more powerfully subversive horror films in recent memory. It also, sadly, still extremely relevant in the age of Trump, Kavanaugh, and other men who seek to silence and subjugate women. The film offers harsh critiques of this misogyny, as well as exposing the troubling male gaze in cinema. Body modification is also a key element explored in the film, and this reflects both how entrenched societal norms prohibit women’s agency over their own bodies, and how women work, by any means necessary, to reclaim their bodies.
American Mary is in many ways a spiritual descendant to other important, female-centered revenge films, especially Abel Ferrara’s Ms. 45 (1981). Like that film, American Mary features an unsettling, graphic rape of the female protagonist, who then fights to regain control over her body and exert her own agency. While this plot device is often overused and misused terribly in film, and we as reviewers need to be sensitive to the very real triggering effects these depictions can cause in viewers. Ms. 45 and American Mary are attempting to reflect what women face every day—that constant, pervasive, lingering threat from a patriarchal society seeking to own and abuse women’s bodies for its own pleasure.
While American Mary is extraordinary in many ways, the lead performance by Katharine Isabelle is particularly breathtaking. Isabelle—a Canadian actress recognized for her work in horror, yet not as well-known by audiences outside the genre—is more than up to the task of carrying the film. Her work as Mary Mason should be considered alongside other brave performances in film from the last decade. It’s a confident, smart, and often darkly funny performance.
Mary is a medical student living a mostly isolated, lonely existence. Flat-broke and desperate for cash, she takes a job as an exotic dancer. The club owner almost immediately fantasizes about Mary dancing erotically onstage. Some critics questioned the film’s feminism for including such scenes, as well as criticizing Mary’s attire in the film—as ludicrous and unrealistic as it may be, she performs surgery while wearing lingerie and stiletto heels. By lingering over Mary’s body, the Soska sisters are implicating us, the audience, in the leering gaze of Mary’s boss and the other men in the film. Male viewers are guilty of perpetuating the male gaze in cinema at the expense of women’s agency, and the Soska sisters are tacitly reflecting that truth. Mary is seen as just a hot body to most of the men in the film, yet we’re shown repeatedly just how intelligent and highly skilled she is as a surgeon. Even her choice of surgery attire seems intentional and serves a purpose beyond mere titillation, acting as a subversive nod to how most barely-dressed women in horror act as victims to more powerful (male) figures. Here, instead, when Mary dresses this way, she is the one wielding the power—as the surgeon who holds people’s lives in her hands.
Over the course of the film, Mary begins to lead three distinct, yet overlapping lives: med student, stripper, and in-demand surgeon in the shadowy underworld of body modification. Around this time, Mary is invited to a party by her mentor in school, unaware that her debasement is the professor’s end goal. He drugs, chokes, and rapes her, also recording her degradation for posterity. Immediately following, Mary descends the elevator in her rapist’s apartment building. In a wordless, enormously powerful moment, Isabelle’s flat expression and cold, dead eyes convey Mary’s shock and trauma. That she’s literally descending also highlights Mary’s metaphorical descent—from med student to underground plastic surgeon to the depths of her own soul.
From this point forward, Mary becomes more of a cinematic sister to Thana (Zoë Lund) from Ms. 45—an avenging angel flying too close to the sun. The film impressively pivots deftly from body modification horror to rape-revenge horror, while still doing justice to both.
At one point, Mary asks her boss at the club, “Do you think I’m crazy?” Is Mary crazy? Or is she a women pushed too far, by financial distress and the constant, daily, ever-present threat of toxic masculinity? Women are made to feel crazy by a world that benefits from their degradation—look no further than Professor Christine Blasey Ford’s recent testimony in front of the US Senate Judiciary Committee. Mary’s story reflects that struggle for women to attain full agency over their bodies and their lives. That she finds socially unacceptable ways to gain this control—be it stripping or performing illegal surgery or enacting bloody vengeance on her rapist—says more about how the world perceives and treats women than it does about Mary’s choices or her mental health.
After such an impressive buildup, American Mary falters slightly in the final act, but certainly not enough to diminish its impact. Mary’s denouement still registers as poignantly devastating. In six years since its release, the Soska sisters’ deft direction and Katharine Isabelle’s astonishingly powerful performance ensure that American Mary feels as fresh—and, sadly, as relevant—as ever.
