My expectations were understandably low upon slipping Bloody Mary into my DVD player. I knew the acting would be terrible, I knew the story wouldn't be anything groundbreaking, and I knew the effects would look even more low-budget than they probably were. I knew to expect the worst, and that is exactly what I found in this brutal train wreck of a film.
Bloody Mary is about a group of psychiatric hospital nurses who spend their nights going into a tunnel below the hospital, stripping completely naked, and chanting "I believe in Bloody Mary" to an old mirror. One of the young women goes missing, and her big sister arrives to investigate her disappearance. Around this point I began asking myself, "Does this movie actually have anything to do with Mary Tudor?" No, of course not! Turns out Bloody Mary was really a psychiatric patient who became so obsessed with her reflection that she killed a nurse, escaped into the tunnels under the hospital, and stared at herself in a mirror until she starved to death. Who knew? It was also at this point that I was tricked into believing that this movie was actually doing something right. Instead of explaining in the entire plot in a bought of exposition diarrhea, the important details are gradually revealed as the main character discovers them throughout her investigation. There's just one problem with this: over half of the plot is left unexplained! By the time the credits started to roll, I was left with more questions than answers.
What is Bloody Mary's motivation for killing people and how is it that she's able to emerge from the mirror to strike? What exactly did the nurses hope to accomplish by summoning her? Who on Earth were those characters that movie introduced and dropped with no rhyme or reason? Bloody Mary fails on all levels. The acting and cinematography were painful to watch, subplots lasted about ten seconds apiece before vanishing, story and dialogue alike were confusing and awkward, and overall...it was just boring. There was nothing engaging or interesting. There was a lot of pointless nudity...was that supposed to be entertaining? There was some blood that looked like water with food coloring thrown in at the last second...was that supposed to be scary? I suppose, as with any other questions I had about this movie, these will simply have to go unanswered.
This isn't one of those movies where "it's so bad, it's good!" It's just plain awful. I couldn't find anything enjoyable or redeeming about Bloody Mary, and believe me, I was looking! There are many "bad" movies that I love; my favorite film is a piece of cinematic dreck. My point being, if anyone was willing to be sympathetic toward this movie, it was me. And I paid for this with ninety-three minutes of my life that I'll never get back.
