Great Film overall

A Major Disappointment

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

A group of late twenty-something friends meet at a cabin for a long weekend of reliving old times. These boring friends talk and talk for hours about their personal baggage and who slept with whom almost to the point you forget you're watching a horror film, or are supposed to be. Eventually they play the "say Dead Mary in the mirror" game with a candle with the idea that the spirit of the dead witch will appear. Instead the spirit possesses one of them but no one including the audience who it is. Borrowing heavily from John Carpenter's "The Thing", minus the style and suspense, the characters start to distrust one another. This movie had potential to be a minor success but the lack of any action for such a long period of time sinks it fast. There is a few nice moments, like when the thing…I mean a character, reveals herself to another character in a shack in the woods. There isn't much gore to speak of and what little there is unconvincing. The unknown cast is good but the movie needed to shift gears and actually get scary for it to work and it just doesn't.

Originality is definitely not Dead Mary's strongest suit, the film borrowing heavily from seminal horror classic The Evil Dead, utilising the well-worn urban legend of Bloody Mary (albeit with a slight name tweak) to kick off its supernatural activity, after which it attempts to mimic the atmosphere of paranoia and mistrust from John Carpenter's The Thing. Thankfully, despite its derivative nature, the film still manages to be quite an unsettling experience at times, fledgling director Robert Wilson handling the mounting tension with aplomb and his likable cast giving strong performances.Wilson takes a slow-burn approach to proceedings, introducing his principle characters at leisure, giving each a potted history so as to help define their personalities: Matt (Jefferson Brown) is scared of commitment, and has chosen the weekend to break up (again) with his understandably irritated girlfriend Kim (Dominique Swain); love-rat Dash (Michael Majeski) has a track record of cheating on his doormat of a wife, Amber (Reagan Pasternak); Baker (Steven McCarthy) is in a new relationship with the much younger Lily (Maggie Castle), but has been carrying on a secret affair with one of the other women; Eve (Marie-Josée Colburn), on the other hand, only has relationships with married men. Once these characters have been established, it's on with the spookiness, the friends daring each other to invoke the spirit of legendary witch Dead Mary by saying her name three times in front of a mirror. No prizes for guessing that they are successful, Mary's spirit possessing them one by one, turning them into bloodthirsty killers.Although Dead Mary's premise presents plenty of opportunity for frantic scenes of gore and cheap scares, a measured and rather reserved approach is maintained throughout, Wilson preferring to rely on atmosphere and the suggestion of nastiness to disturb his viewer rather than drenching them in OTT splatter and causing them to have heart attacks. As much as I enjoy a well executed shock and good bloodbath, I have to admit that the director's deliberate style is refreshingly different and surprisingly effective, delivering more than its fair share of decent chills. Where the film does fall down slightly is in the finer details of its story, with some elements definitely requiring further explanation, and in the progression of its characters, who have little problem in accepting the bizarre nature of their situation and are quick to react accordingly. If it was me, I'm not so sure that I would find it as easy to dismember and burn my closest friends.6.5 out of 10, rounded up to 7 for IMDb.

I expected this film to be a classic teen slasher flick which was what I actually wanted to see but there was just so much missing from it that didn't even meet the standards for that. The acting is very good, especially from Dominique Swain but the atmosphere of the movie is so depressing that there needs to be more action and less talking. I know that sounds typical but this film failed at making scares without blood and gore (like "When a stranger calls"). The script is very original and the setting of the lake is beautiful but all of this was taken for granted. This film could've been an awesome horror flick but its more of a thriller/drama genre because the first half is all talking. Also the film is based on "Bloody Mary" the game but the context really had nothing to do with it as we saw no ghost of Mary! This film isn't horrible, but don't expect any scares from it and do not be fooled by the DVD cover or the R rating. All in all an okay movie that could have been so much better.

This was on demand on Showtime and I got my wife, sister & her husband to watch it on a fluke as a stupid, funny, hopefully slightly scary movie. We were all shocked to find we really liked it. Decent acting, fairly good plot and we really liked that you never really saw 'Mary'. The end was a little weak, but all in all we really liked it.I'd recommend it for a late night when there's not much else to watch... it may surprise you too.Definitely way better than we expected.Watch it.