American Mary

In medical school studying to be a surgeon (and already possessing skills useful in the profession she so desires), Mary Mason is immediately put to the test when she encounters a deal she can't resist...perform a special surgery on someone associated with a stripclub owner (who is obviously into other criminal activities not quite elaborated in specific detail) for $5000. Paying the rent and getting creditors off her back, it helps, but soon a drug-induced rape from a deviant professor warps Mary into a gradually-developed psychopath.
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Katherine Isabelle gained a momentary glimpse of cult fame with the awesome modern werewolf film, Ginger Snaps, but the horror genre, for whatever reason (I'm not quite sure why exactly), deemed it necessary to bury her in bit parts. Few films capitalized on her sex appeal and screen presence, and soon she's just another pretty face lost in the background while others (perhaps less deserved) are of storyline focus and screen time in front of the camera. It was too bad, but American Mary (2012), a Canadian psychological horror film, has forwarded her back into the front of the line. It was twelve years too long, because she's incredibly sexy and captures the attention even with humanity fading from her until she's nothing left but a shell absent practically a soul. Her Mary even asks stripclub owner, Billy (Antonio Cupo), if she's a monster...the irony in this is that not long before this, Billy had just brutalized her former surgical professor (another one that taught at the university; this medical school seems to harvest deviants). I'm not sure Billy is the correct person to ask questions regarding moral character.

American Mary follows the “extracurricular activities” of a struggling student going to school with designs on being a surgeon, falling on such financial hard times, she accepts certain “underground” work (despite no credentials of specificity) for the cash flow that would keep her out of debt. First is someone who took a nice cut straight from his face to his belly in the basement of a stripclub (she was so desperate for cash, Mary attempted to “audition” (failing miserably) for a job with the owner, instead asked to perform surgery for the suffering “associate” in his “employ”). Billy, the club owner, then told “body mod enthusiasts” (those with plastic surgery addictions) about her impressive work on his guy and her rep spreads among those so looking for someone willing to place aside certain surgical “ethics” that the medical community at large might deem inappropriate. Like twins having arms “surgically switched” or surgery allowing a woman to have the form of Barbie naked…the latter plays a major factor in her undoing. There’s even a body mod Betty Boop (complete with voice and bubbly personality to match) who wants to repay Mary for her work.

I think it is that pivotal moment when Mary is heinously raped, that she "turns a corner" and is never quite the same. This is when that dark half takes control as if Mrs. Hyde was waiting dormant for such an opportunity to be freed from her cage. That would come when Mary's violated and all that was normal is twisted into Bloody Mary. The man responsible for her rape becomes her object of experimentation. This is really unsettling and grisly, particularly when we see him hanging without limbs in a storage shed by hooks. To hone her craft and master her skills as a surgeon, he's the guinea pig. When a security guard shows up, temporarily subduing her, trying to rescue the victim, Mary commits her first real murder, and it's fury unleashed with one pounding thud to the face after another. Her body mod work for those with the kind of cash that can afford such talents and skill is all performed in hush-hush places like a room in a new loft (she become able to afford) and "in the back" of Billy's club. It seemed to me that with each surgery, a little piece of Mary's humanity dies. It seems fate pays her in kind when her first body mod surgery didn't go over so well with the husband. He sees the "art" of Mary and responds violently.

Billy's desire for Mary takes hold, yet with such fantasies (like a showstopping dance number on his stripclub stage, with Mary pouring blood all over her neck and chest) comes that violence from her that represents a latent fear he truly has that she might pull out that scalpel and plunge it deep. A detective shows up periodically (but he's not a huge factor, and ultimately he's never truly established as a threat to her; there's a moment where she contemplates poisoning him, but she realizes he's good and cares about what might have happened to her at the professor's hands) to give her (and hopefully get) insight about the ongoing cases involving the two missing surgeons and their sexually evil activities (including recording them). He sees her as broken and abused, even if she herself remains mum and purposely concealed about any of it ever happening. By the time he offers help to her, Mary has forged too deep a career path into the underground surgeries (without a license; I think this might go lost on us after a while) and fallen so far into her psychopathy that embracing a return to normalcy seems impossible. I guess the conclusion says that if you live by the scalpel, you die by the scalpel.