Mary

Mary is an unscary in-your-face horror that tries to be intelligent. It features the talent of Gary Oldman, and strong performances by Emily Mortimer, but even their dedication could not save this movie from sinking. There is a weak climax, and the lack of subtlety makes the story dull. It could have been more subtle by making it seem like one person is losing his or her mind, or focusing on how the characters descend to madness and culminate in a horrific climax. However, the story is weak and even the shots are done poorly. It fails to create claustrophobia or dread. The movie does deliver decent jump scares but its over reliance on this technique shows that it is not a scary story at all. If you are expecting a tense psychological horror on par with The Shallows, you will be sorely disappointed. If you are expecting a haunted house on water, it still fails. Don't waste time if you want to see it for itself. But if you want to see people screaming at the jump scares, you would probably enjoy it.

Okay, so there's nothing new here, or particularly original, but from the get go at least there are characters on display and they are behaving believably. Makes you a little more vested in the situation as it unfolds. I don't know that the flashback structure of it helped any, but what most folks want to know is "was it scary?" or "was it stupid?" For my tastes it was involving enough, with a few creepy vibes but nothing really exceptional. I could have done without the lazy go to of repeated nightmares in order to have something unnerving happen. Make the shocks part of the story! Make them part of the situation! We lose investment if we expect every unusual occurrence to just be a harmless dream. But that being said, at least it wasn't stupid the rest of the time and I never had the urge to fast forward thru it. Entirely acceptable. But I doubt I'll ever watch it again. There needs to be an option with the streaming services between "liked" and "disliked".

Trapped on the open sea in a haunted boat is an oft-seen horror movie scenario, but rarely has it been used with as little imagination as in Mary. In telling his nautical tale of terror, director Michael Goi employs so many hackneyed techniques that even the talents of Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer cannot prevent the film from being a colossal waste of time.

Introducing his film at Frightfest, Goi claimed to have over 18,000 films in his collection, so one wonders why he directs like he's only ever seen a handful, and bad ones at that. One might think that with such a wealth of inspiration, he could have come up with something a little more creative... something that didn't rely so heavily on obvious supernatural jump scares accompanied by obligatory loud noises. The scenes intended to have me throwing my popcorn in the air in fright actually had me holding my head in dismay: this is about as basic as horror movies get.

3/10. I imagine that It'll be a case of abandon ship for many who dare to sail these treacherous waters.

It's actually not so much the ability of the actors to act (I don't think anybody will see Gary Oldman and doubt he can act), but it is the script and the horror movie cliches/tropes that will likely get you quite upset. To say the least. And you also have other people in here (Emily Mortimer), who are way above anything in depth, that the movie can offer them.

Having said all that and all the things that are predictable, the movie can still be enjoyable to a certain degree/level. You have to be a fan and not mind the flaws that are littered throughout the running time.

It's one of those movies you'll go and check on IMDb to see the ratings, see 1 star, OMG! Cringe. Keep scrolling and find allot of negitive reviews, but you'll see the odd one or two that say it's a good or average movie, I go with the latter, I thought the acting was above board and the idea and setting were good, as is the background of the ship in question, it touches on the Bermuda triangle and such, it's not an amazing film, and it won't win any awards, but its one that'll Keep your attention, just go into it with an open mind and you'll enjoy it!!