Toronto After Dark: American Mary

I was fully prepared to hate this movie. I didn't even really want to see it. The reason I stayed for the late show at Toronto After Dark's opening night double-feature--the film's Canadian premier--was so that I, too, could join the bandwagon of dislike that had been circling the movie since Fantastic Fest.

I sat in the theatre as the credits rolled. "I didn't hate it," I said to Mark, and then repeated on Twitter.

I'm always surprised when that happens, when a movie I'm sure to hate subverts or exceeds my expectations. Granted, my expectations are pretty low, but they're there nonetheless. American Mary, I'm pleased to say, caught be off guard.

Not having seen Dead Hooker in a Trunk, I have no basis for comparison--this is the first Soska twins movie I've seen. I'm glad I went in clean, so to speak. No chance of bias (except for my predetermined opinion). It's obvious from the first few moments that the girls have surrounded themselves with talented folk; American Mary looks great. A few sound issues aside, the film is well made with fantastic visual effects and Katharine Isabelle shines as the titular Mary.

She should. The part was written for her.

Mary Mason is a med student, about to start her surgical residency. She's also in debt. To make ends meet, she interviews for a job at a strip club but ends up operating in a very different role. Despite her initial resistance, Mary becomes involved in body modification and soon enjoys a new life free of debt and worry. But Mary's not out of the woods as events from her recent past come back to haunt her.

The film is more mature than I anticipated, and kind of understated. Although bodies are certainly on display, it's Mary's body that receives the most attention. Not really what you'd expect from a film that deals with body modification. The lovely Mary is objectified by one man and fantasized about by another, but there's nothing overtly sexual about Katharine Isabelle's performance. Mary is refreshingly unselfconscious about her looks, which is reflected in the way she dresses and carries herself; never does she use her sexuality to her advantage but she dresses provocatively enough in short skirts and platform heels. This all the more interesting given the sexual assault her character suffers early in the story.

I can't decide if Mary's singular sexual detachment is a factor of the film's female directors or the character's medical training. Maybe it's a bit of both. The film subverts or, perhaps more to the point, refutes the male gaze, replacing it with a relatively neutral one.

This neutrality distances the film somewhat from the audience. That distance makes it difficult to connect with Mary at times, but Mary herself feels disconnected from the world around her. Although she's welcome in the body mod community, she's not a member. But it's the closest thing she has to a circle of friends, and she even feels entitled reject others from the group.

As for the body mod community members, the film falls short of sensationalizing their modifications while still managing to shock the audience. It is a horror movie, after all. With the exception of one person, the movie is sensitive to the wants and needs of its characters, and uses humour to dispel their otherness.

Strange that a film so well done should have as weak a script as it does. Maybe weak isn't the right word. Unfulfilled? Unconventional? The movie is not about Mary's personal journey--she wastes no time getting revenge or waffling about (this a good thing, by the way). She's very much the same person from beginning to end. Nor is the film about Mary's "situational journey"--she's not hounded or pursued in any way, or ever in any real danger. Rather, the film is just about Mary, her abrupt change in career path. It feels a little thin, is the problem. There are things happening in the background and all around her that could have been given more space in the script: the police investigation and Mary's relationship with Billy, for example.

Things just kind of happen in the story, and while it does have a trajectory, you never get a sense of where it's going. I suspect this is why some people dismiss it. The movie isn't artsy or weird enough for it just wander around a plot until time runs out; it's still meant to be a conventional narrative horror movie, but the conventional horror narrative is, unfortunately lacking.

During the post-screening Q&A, the twins told a funny story about trying to impress Eli Roth in which they admit to pulling the idea for American Mary out of their ass. Fortunately, the finished product is much more polished.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence)

I thought the trailer gave too much away.  It made me uncomfortable, though, and that was something.  A feeling I couldn't shake for a couple of days, some kind of unnaturalness--different from being entirely grossed out, just wrong.  I was intrigued, in spite of myself.  And nervous, afraid the film would leave me feeling even more weird.

"Well, I'm gonna go shower.  And then I'm gonna shower again.  A few more times after that," Brad said.

I have to admit, I didn't feel nearly as icky.  I think the trailer, in its reveal, had prepared me.  Still, the very idea of a human centipede is mind-blowingly disgusting.  And to have it explained in painstaking detail, and then to see the result in all its perverted glory, it's hard not to be both fascinated and alienated by the science and depravity of it all.

Made to fetch and follow the doctor around his house, the threesome suffers indignities that are largely incomprehensible.  Although it is completely beyond most people's ability to empathize with the unfortunate human subjects, sympathy and disgust vie for equal representation.  Displaying an ability to be both awing and awful, the film addresses the issue of who-goes-where, with complete openness.  There is no doubt the mid-section is the worst position to be in, and the doctor explains, in the same straightforward manner as he did with the surgery, exactly how and why he chooses his victim.

The centipede may be the centerpiece of the movie, but Dr. Heiter is easily the best thing about the film.  He's a human inhuman monster.  Not some detached, superior intellectual, but a feeling man who is truly and deeply touched by madness.  Once a great surgeon, he has retired to the country to pursue his medical experimentation in peace.  Unlike other monsters who wear a mask of benevolence, Dr. Heiter is has no interest in making people feel welcome or comfortable in his home.

To give the film credit, where credit's due, the movie does not take us into the operating room, but gives us time to reflect on the procedure.  Indeed, this down time tends to drag just a bit, but the delicacy with which the film handles the moment of sewing three people together, is surprising.  And it's balanced, or perhaps more appropriately, offset, by the remainder of the film being focused almost entirely on the experiences of the centipede.

Creep

My friend and I came into contact with Creep while browsing the racks at the video store. The art looked cool, the copy read well, so we went for it. She only watched it that one time. I took it home and played it again.

Kate, played be Franka Potente, leaves a party to hunt down and try to bed George Clooney. After failing to hail a cab, she descends into the tube with time enough to catch the last train from Charing Cross. But she falls asleep on the platform and when she wakes, the trains have all gone and she's locked in the station. But she's not alone. A workmate, Guy, followed her from the party and, high on coke, he attempts to rape her. Guy's interrupted when someone pulls him off Kate and attacks him. Kate uses this opportunity to run away. She finds help in Jimmy, a homeless person who agrees to take her down the tracks to the security station. But it's too late. Too late for Kate, for Jimmy, and everyone else. Guy's attacker is roaming the tube, and he won't stop till morning.

After that first (and for Mina, only) viewing we were pretty well creeped out and grossed out by the end of it. Though not particularly disgusting or overly graphic, Creep is fairly suspenseful at times, a bit predictable at others, but all together relatively unique. The film's strength lies in its monster, the creep. Raised as a medical experiment and then abandonned or forgotten, the creep roams the London Underground with his rats, finding victims in the hapless or homeless souls that wander into his realm.

Though human, the creep is inhuman in his behaviours and how he treats his victims. Outwardly he's a person, though with some minor physical deformity, but inwardly he's something else entirely. One of the more horrifying scenes comes when the creep performs a kind of surgery on one of his victims. He goes through the motions of washing his hands, he dresses himself in a surgical gown and gloves, and pretends to gas his patient. But the "surgery" itself is a violent and bloody affair, suggesting the creep has no real understanding of medicine or anatomy. By going through the motions of surgery, the creep is reenacting scenes from his past, copying the behaviours he witnessed as a child, but his actions lack context--or at least any context that we can understand.

And yet the creep knows and understands us, in a way. He, at one point, prey on Kate's compassion, aping words he heard earlier, a pleading cry for salvation. It has the appropriate effect and Kate is momentarily stunned. But the wretched creature before her is more deceitful than pathetic, and the creep uses Kate's pity against her. It's a costly error.

I don't mean to suggest that Creep is heavy on the commentary. The film is mostly just Franka Potente running away from a monster. But Kate's drive to get out only makes things worse for everyone around her. She didn't exactly bring this horror upon herself--recall she was a victim of an attempted rape--but her will to survive is challenged by her humanity. Each person she meets either falls victim to the creep or, if already taken by the creep, their lives somehow grow worse.

Franka does not become the monster she is trying to escape, but she does undergo a change of sorts. Dirty and exhausted, she climbs onto the platform at Charing Cross where her horrific journey began, just as the morning trains start to run. She survived the night, but she is not the same person she was a few hours ago. Curled up on the platform, a commuter mistakes her for a homeless person and gives her a couple of pounds. One can't help but think of how and when Kate will return to her life; all she has to do is leave the station--it's what she's been striving for--but all she does is cry.

This was my third time seeing this movie and still got to me. Some things I guess, like creepy underground monsters, just don't get old.