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A couple
of friends gather at a cabin by a lake for a
weekend of drinking and reminiscing on the good old
college days. But things have changed since college,
their relationships have taken some serious beatings
and the atmosphere is overall pretty depressing. In
order to make a bad night good again, the friends
decide to play a game of Dead Mary (which is basically
like Bloody Mary) - bad idea...
So Bloody... err... I mean Dead Mary comes to life and
kills the teens off in Urban Legends style right? Nope!
Dead Mary is not another simple, uncreative DTV slasher
flick. It actually has a solid and original story (well,
perhaps not groundbreaking but still) that has very
little to do with the urban legend. The cover is a
complete cheat and the plot description on the back
doesn't really fit with the plot of the movie, so let
me guide you through what I just saw.
Dead Mary revolves around a couple of friends in their
late 20's. Baker has decided to bring his 22-year-old
girlfriend along for the weekend as well and naturally
she has a hard time blending in with the group. After
a couple of arguments, the tension between the friends
can more or less be cut with a knife and so they decide
to play a game of Dead Mary in a desperate attempt to
make a bad night good again. What happens next is kind
of unexpected. See, Mary's spirit takes over one of the
friends body (I won't tell you who though) and goes on
a killing rampage. But this isn't your average slasher
flick since the people who get killed all come back to
life and try to turn the friends against each other.
That's right! This game just took an unexpected turn.
There are many things to love about this movie, and
the first thing that I noticed was the brilliant
photography. The warm summer oozes out of the screen
and the bond between the friends feels so realistic
that you can actually see yourself being one of them.
They're not all stereotypes, but they actually feel
like real people - they all have issues and despite
being an attractive group, there's more to it than
what meets the eye. It also helped that all of the
actors involved in this movie gave strong performances.
Naturally it wasn't all good though. Dead Mary does
indeed have its fair share of problems. Every time
a dead person would start to talk, the dialogue would
become tedious and cliché - and these scenes lasted
for way too long. There's also the fact that it should
be obvious for the friends to see who the killer really
is. I figured it out pretty damn quickly. And finally,
the ending was really unsatisfying and felt rushed.
Ultimately though, Dead Mary was a surprisingly pleasant
experience and I'd recommend it to anyone who doesn't
want to see a slasher flick about bloody Mary coming
back to life and killing a bunch of teens off. Sure,
the cover might be misleading, but luckily, this time
that's actually a good thing. Give it a shot.
Again, misleading cover. Unrated for what? It's really
not that gory, this would have easily passed with an
R-rating. Just because they can't be bothered sending
Teletubbies to the MPAA and instead have it be unrated,
that doesn't mean that it's a gory sexfest. Either
way, we get some blood splatter and a chin ripped off.
The rock music was decent, as was the suspense score.
Several creepy scenes where the music pitched in and
did what it was intended to do.
This is not, I repeat, this is NOT a campy slasher flick
about Bloody Mary, it's a surprisingly clever and
refreshingly innovative horror flick in the vein of
Cabin Fever. Give this one a try, even if you're not
a fan of urban legends, it's surprisingly decent.
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