Customer Reviews

Dead Mary

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

Starts off like a sleazy version of Dawson's Creek. We watch as Kim (Dominique Swain) and all her friends set up at a cabin for a long weekend. The first half hour of the film is spent getting to know the characters; right off the bat Kim and her boyfriend Matt are at odds (blah, blah, blah) and that sets the framework for some of the other drama that follows. Bottom line is they're all friends who have no problem with screwing each other over. Kind of illustrating the sort of blank existence I've seen associated with extreme stereotypes of Gen X-ers, cynical to the point of melodrama. However, I did find that it reinforced the feeling of seclusion and paranoia central to the theme of the movie and while slow paced in the beginning it kind of made up for it at the end.

The pace starts to pick up a bit when the group is hanging out having drinks and the conversation turns to Dead Mary. I was happy Kim at least referenced the Bloody Mary urban legend and acknowledged the variance giving the story a small touch of realism(tee hee). After a few of them go into the bathroom to inadvertently conjure a demon, which we later find, possesses or infects a person, then forces the possessed to kill thus spreading said possession or infection, the action ramps up a bit. Fade to black (Literally).

From here on out, I have to say, I loved this film. The subtlety throughout the story was notable; there was never that feeling of any danger until something happened and caught me off guard and also had me saying "Wait a minute what just happened?" This for me made the entire film very worthwhile. An added worthiness was the fact that the supernatural force stalking the group worked more like a spiritual possession / virus enabling the possessed / infected to see and share everyone's darkest secret at the other's expense. Also, the awesome thing about this is that you can literally mangle the person, watch them die, and then a few minutes later they regenerate all while spouting party fouls and faux-paus and this alone made up for the slow character build-up at the beginning of the movie for me. This element would not have worked nearly as well or been half as gratifying when we find out which character banged the other friend's significant other if the viewer had not had some insight into the characters lives and secretly wanted them to die just so they would stop talking.


This movie is definitely achieved cult status in my library. Dead Mary does a great job of building that feeling of seclusion, a common byproduct of paranoia. I'll admit going into this I wasn't really sure about it but I was so pleasantly surprised. There was a decent amount of gore, excellent pacing and some great one liners; "Stop hitting my face with garden tools!!" Ha! Buy, rent, or watch this film.

...this movie was quite a surprise. It is about a group that go spend a weekend in the woods. They play a game of "Dead Mary" and then mysterious things begin to happen. Reminds me of "The Thing" in the sense of paranoia. Everyone thinks they have become a monster and are not sure who to trust. Interesting flick worthy off adding to you r collection.

There are lots of low budget horror movies that give the genre a bad name. I had almost given up the idea that any of these sort of throw away movies could produce any real horror or suspense. I'm glad I took a chance on "Dead Mary", and you will be too. It's just the sort of late night spookshow that would be a great addition for anyone's library. You want the real deal?? Don't watch this one alone with the lights out!

An decent flick for the direct-to-video horror genre. There's a kind of a "The Thing" feel to this with a sprinking of "Candyman" which works (surprisingly) fairly well for the most part, even with the ambiguous ending. It allows for some suspense and a few genuine scares. Pretty good performances from the cast and excellent atmosphere make this watchable.

"Dead Mary" is a very good horror flick. For those that liked the understated creepiness of "Session 9," "Dead Mary" should work for you. The acting is far above average for a horror flick, with each character/actor showing nuance and complexity as people rather than horror show types getting picked off as the movie goes on. In short, the story is about a bunch of late twenty(or early thirty) somethings going for a reunion at a cabin in the wood. But underneath the surface there's a bunch of sexual tension between partners - and former partners. "Friends" this is not. Too much drinking, pot, and barbed comments make for a sour stroll down memory lane. Finally the campfire game "Dead Mary,"is suggested, almost like a gauntlet being thrown down. Things get more frisky after the game, and as others have pointed out, Carpenter's "The Thing" comes readily to mind. But there are other echoes. Without tipping off the coming story, I noticed how the director, skillfully signals some of these influences: "Blair Witch Project"(the too quiet woods, the cabin), "The Exorcist" (bumping on the roof), the grainy darkness and the half seen undead (the original "Evil Dead"). A few criticisms I did have: trouble hearing some dialogue, which may just be due to watching it on cable; and trouble seeing what was going on at times - which could of been by design, given the general "look" of the movie. I'm definitely interested in seeing other movies by the director, Robert Wilson. He knows horror is all about establishing a sense of dread, and establishing it with real people - and in "Dead Mary," he has succeeded.

You know when I saw the title I'm thinking ok....rehash of the bloody mary urban legend you know where you say bloody mary 3 times in the mirror and pray she don't show up and you go tits up! In fact they did make a movie called bloody mary. And they even cover the urban legend in the first Season of Supernatural. However even as the bloody mary legend is mentioned in this film, the scary original game of "Dead Mary" is borne. Yeah Whatever! First this movie...all 103 minutes of it moves at slower than snail speed for the first half. I felt like I was watching some twenty something drama about interpersonal relationships and trying to find out what happen to the glory days of high school and college life. Reguardless things are already amiss at the beginning of this film from the opening sequence when Dominique Swan is waiting for her boyfriend to return with gas for broken down car. Even when he returns he mentions that there was no one at the gas station....anywhere. Then theres the mysterious absence of the mutual friend "Ted", who by the way never shows up anywhere in this movie.
As things progress....slowly, after all the key players are introduced we find them in the common room of the summer cabin(of coarse where else would they be? miles from anyone, with minimal gas, and no cell phone signal and no sign of anyone anywhere.) playing the game dead mary. 3 participate things progress with a couple of jumpy scenes(nothing to get yer panties in a twist over). With some strange noises and a little paranoia the character "Matt" investigates noise in the woods. Thats when the weird stuff happens.....mysterious death and his eventual supernatural ressurection/possession prompts the rest of the characters to do him in a second time. A shovel through the face and a quick burning make for some creepy scenes. This film is not that gory, but some interesting shot angles and eerie lighting make for some uneasy viewing.
Now that the characters realize that the possession is jumping from infected person to infected person, but whose infected. This question leads to one of the biggest plot device rip off I've seen in a while. John Carpenter's The Thing (1982) with Kurt Russel. In that movie an alien Polymorphic doppelganger virus infects a science crew in the arctic, its up to McReady(Russel) and others to figure out "whose the Thing?" This is drawn out a little much in "Dead Mary" as everyone is jumping to paranoid conclusions about their own friends.
What I did like about this movie is that the plot was actually so much more than just a game of Dead Mary, the possessed, when tortured and questioned hinted at world domination through armegeddon. which answered some of the questions posed in this film, like Where the hell is "Ted", or the neighbors, or why wasn't there anyone at that gas station on the way up here. It would be interesting to see a sequal to this movie, but their would have to be more action, more gore, and less relationship drama ca-ca! I gave this movie 1 star for the acting, and 2 others for the second half of the movie. If there was a bit more gore(something I kind of expected to see with an "unrated" tag on the box) would have prompted me to give it one more star. Bottom Line:..............not bad, if you can wade through 51 minutes of boredom until the creepy stuff begins.

Late night is the best time for a horrific b masterpiece. Over the years the window in between 12:30 am til 4:00 am has been such a huge source of our reviewing materials by revealing the straight to video side of films. For about the past month, every Friday night around 1 am this fim Dead Mary comes on. After checking it out partially here and there it was finally time to sit through the film in its entirety. Just from the description explaining a group of friends are terrorized by a supernatural force they summon lets you know what to expect. This is the same description for about 500 other horror titles that are shown late night, but thats all part of b.

When pondering this film you may wonder, why the title "Dead Mary" instead of the well known tale of Bloody Mary? The one thing that came to mind was some type of copyright nonsense. Which turned out to be exactly the problem. The original screenplay was called Bloody Mary. The title was cleared in every territory except Japan, where the name Bloody Mary is copyrighted, and it was suggested that the title be changed to Dead Mary for release in that country alone. When the film's producers discovered that another film, also called Bloody Mary, was being readied for release around the same time, it was decided that the film's title be officially changed to Dead Mary in order to avoid confusion. But with a direct to video release does it even matter?

As we begin we are introduced to yet another group of d bags who are having a little reunion in the woods to reminisce of old times. So for once we don't have a group of high school kids getting killed in the woods. Instead we have older versions of high school idiots who are probably more irritating now then they were in high school. Go Dead Mary! They finally arrive at the cabin and not much of anything happens for the first half hour. There is a lot of dialog which amounts to absolutely nothing. It gets so boring you may even consider just shutting it down. As night rolls in they are hanging out having some drinks when one of the girls suggest they play Dead Mary. After she starts challenging the room they finally give in and one by one go into the bathroom. With only a lit candle they stand in front of the mirror with their eyes closed and repeat Dead Mary 3 times. This part actually was a bit creepy. The atmosphere was very dark and provided some element of horror, but nothing too amazing. The one kid has an odd experience as his candle goes out and turns the light on to find blood on the sink signifying Dead Mary is one the loose. See this was a disappointment. It would have been cool to see some old decrepit spirit come smahing through the mirror but we get nothing. Everyone now decides it's bed time and one guy continues to get loaded by himself in the living room where he eventually passes out. He awakes to some odd noises which for some reason make him run outside. Once outside he gets killed. The friends go running as his corpse begins speaking revealing secrets within the group of friends. So instead of a cool Dead Mary running around have people getting killed and possesed by her spirit which makes them come back only to reveal each other secrets. It's absurd. The rest of the film moves at the same pace with nothing to offer. It feels like you're watching more of a therapy session then an actual horror film. All thats revealed is this group of losers dirty laundry in a weak attempt to create some chills.

After the viewing you're going to wonder why this is a horror film. After some research we found out that the original script called for Dead Mary, when summoned by the chant, would rise from the lake and murder each character. Instead of that director Robert Wilson decided it would be much better if Dead Mary was never seen. She wuld just manifest herself in the characters causing them to spill the beans about their friends. He should have picked the first idea which would have been a far superior film. It's good to take an approach outside the whole slasher idea, but there has to be some element of horror to make it work. This one just came up short where the rapidly aproaching ending was all you're rooting for. Don't bother with this unless up very late with nothing better to do.

If you can survive the excruciatingly boring first half hour of Dead Mary, you'll find a watchable horror movie. If the plot were a road, you couldn't walk on it because of a limitless number of potholes, the whole thing doesn't really make much sense, and Dead Mary herself really has nothing to do with what happens, but you can't help but enjoy seeing very bad things happen to such whiny, annoying characters you've learned to hate with every fiber of your being. If you were to take Candyman, Evil Dead, and Cabin Fever, mix them all up together, and extract most of the enjoyable essence that bubbles to the top, you'd have Dead Mary. Actually, apart from the first half hour, I found Dead Mary even more enjoyable than Cabin Fever (but that's not saying much, as I found Cabin Fever extremely disappointing).

Apparently realizing that there have been plenty of movies already featuring a bunch of dumb kids ruing the day they played Candyman or Dead Mary or Dead whoever in front of the mirror, the filmmakers made the bold decision to assemble a group of thirty-somethings playing the same old scary parlor game. Unfortunately, that doesn't happen until we've been forced to mix and mingle with these miserable human beings for far too long. Let's just say this isn't the fun-loving reunion the characters expected it to be. Matt (Jefferson Brown) and Kim (Dominique Swain) are in the middle of breaking up and thus are at each others' throats, the marriage of Dash (Michael Majeski) and Amber (Reagan Pasternak) seems to be based on mutual cheating, the loner Eve (Marie-Josee Colburn) is almost hot but just can't pull it off, and Baker's (Steven McCarthy) new girlfriend Lily (Maggie Castle) feels out of place because she doesn't know anyone. The first half hour is devoted completely to general bitching and stories about who is screwing whom. Then, finally, the Dead Mary gauntlet is laid down (you know, say "Dead Mary" three times in front of a mirror and you'll see her).

I was happy to see the character that annoyed me the most be the first to die; it's never all that clear how that person dies, but it happens in such a way to introduce some mutual suspicion among the others. It's obviously not a normal death, as most dead people don't reanimate themselves and start telling everyone else's secrets. Somehow, this is enough to convince the others that one of them could have the same deadly affliction (I'm going to call it Evil Dead-itis) but still appear normal - and that you can only catch whatever it is when you're alone. The movie does succeed to some degree in keeping the viewer guessing as to whom the monster in disguise actually is, but the best thing it has to offer are some moderately gory scenes and the satisfaction you get from watching such miserable human beings meet such gruesome ends.

One character was smart enough not to even show up. Throughout the really long weekend, everyone keeps waiting for this dude named Ted to arrive. You would think the mystery of Ted's failure to appear would be an important plot point sooner or later. Well, that kind of reasonable expectation is quite wasted on Dead Mary, a film that fails to explain quite a bit about itself.

I thought after reading the reviews, this might be good, it was ok. It sounds good, several friends go to a cabin for a weekend, play a weird game, and turn into demons. The best and most effective part of the film was not the acting, or the effects. It was when, late at night, they're bored, sitting around the cabin, drinking, and start talking about Dead Mary and decide to see if they can summon her, none actually believing they can do it. For a while there, the movie was scary.

You know what it's all about so I'll get to the point. It's not so bad, the acting doesn't suck and it does have gore factor and scare. I wasn't fascinated, but it held my attention. I have definitely seen worse!