Dead Mary

Kim (Dominique Swain) and her boyfriend Matt (Jefferson Brown) have just broken up, but they travel together to a cottage nearby a lake to spend the weekend with their friends Eve (Marie-Josée Colburn), Dash (Michael Majeski) and his wife Amber (Reagan Pasternak) and Baker (Steve McCarthy) and his new girlfriend Lily (Maggie Castle). The atmosphere becomes heavy with the situation between Kim and Matt, and one of them suggests them to play "Dead Mary". Matt, Eve and Dash summon the evil witch repeating her name three times in front of a mirror with a candle. Along the night, Matt hears weird noises, is killed and returns to life, while part of the group is possessed by the fiend. Without knowing who is possessed, the rest of the group fights to survive.

"Dead Mary" is a mediocre movie. The urban legend of Bloody Mary that was brilliantly explored in "Candyman" in the 90's, now is used in a rip-off of "Evil Dead". There are many movies with "a group of friends that goes to a cabin in the woods and faces evil", like for example "Cabin Fever", which works. But "Dead Mary" is awful, with a boring beginning, a messy story where "Dead Mary" never shows up, and a ridiculous conclusion. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Dead Mary – A Possessão" ("Dead Mary – The Possession")

A group of old mates from school spend the weekend at a cabin in the woods (original huh?!), and kills time by yapping on and on about relationships and who's screwing who. After a few drinks one of them remembers an old game - Dead Mary - and the suspense begins.

This could have been a rather entertaining horror flick, but leaves you disappointed. The characters were okay and the story line had potential, but: no blood to talk about, no really scary scenes, no sitting on the edge of your seat and especially no Dead Mary! Trying hard to stay awake for an ending that could possibly have saved the movie from sucking totally turned out to have been in vain, 'cause the ending was the biggest disappointment of them all. Not only are you clueless of what it means, but also frustrated to bits 'cause you've wasted almost one and a half hours on this crap! Considering myself to be quite a genre knower I believe this is one of the worst, or should I say BORING, horror flicks I've seen. It didn't even make me laugh...

Dead Mary is a decent film if you're looking for Drama/Horror, with a heavy emphasis on the drama. I believe where the movie fails, is in it's attempt to sell the audience a touching story about adult relationships, then trying to execute horror. The film begins well, and sets up what could be a creepy tale about messing with the dead, yet by the time they switch gears into scare tactics, it falls on it's face. It is not even remotely scary, in fact we see very little of what the (Monster) is supposed to be... On the bright side, it is very well acted by a group of no-name actors. The cinematography looks great, and could have easily made this an awesome horror film, but in the end, we are left empty and a bit confused. If you're on a date with someone who is grossed out by blood and gore, yet they want to watch a horror movie, this might work out for you. If you are a hardcore horror nut, keep away and go watch The Evil Dead again...

Yes, what the DVD cover depicts and the title of the movie are not very accurate as to what this movie is about. Still it did keep me guessing until the end where I just said to myself "what"? The movie has a reunion of a bunch of idiot waste of spacers, the people who in high school and college thought they were all that because they drank lots and lots of booze and cheat on their "loved" ones repeatedly. Ah yes, how I wanted them all dead right from the get go. This feeling of wanting them dead only increased as they talked and talked and talked, if Leatherface had shown up with his chainsaw I would have been pulling for him...the only character I liked was the younger girlfriend of one of the aforementioned losers who did not want to be there at the extremely boring yet tense reunion and I don't blame her a bit. Well the wild weekend turns really cool when they decide to play a game of Dead Mary, I am guessing because there was already a movie called bloody Mary. Well they play and from the rest of the movie on I am wondering if there was a point to the game dead Mary and if there was a reason to name the movie this. I don't know what happened after that as there was no rules established, no plot established and whatever was killing people was not established. Not that it was all bad, there was a lot of paranoia horror to go around and some good kills as well...along with that, however, there were also a lot of conjecture scenes and pointless plot points too (hey where is that Ted guy anyway?). So all in all this just was not to good of a movie, however not all bad either. At least it was well made and stuff, I have seen a couple of movies recently where you couldn't even say that. So watch out for Dead Mary!!! Though she isn't in this film much.

Let me start by saying that I understand the premise of the movie, and where they where trying to go with it. But they did a horrible job with it. There was so much wrong with the movie, it over shadows any good that there was, making it slim pickings. The story idea, was a rehash of the same old 'bunch of young adults at a camp ground for the weekend'. But they did put in some originality with the whole dead Mary thing. Yeah, it's the same as bloody Mary, and has been done, but still. And doing in the form of a dark psychological thriller rather than the normal monster or gore hound flick was a great idea. But that is the end of it.

The acting was OK at best, but none of the characters had any sort of personality that actually stood out, or made you remember them. They where all the same with different names.

And there are just so many questions, and inconsistencies that it completely ruined the movie, forcing you into a totally confused viewer. We went from a very long and drawn out beginning, that was more like a show of General Hospital than a movie, to people chanting Dead Mary in the mirror, to zombies, then possession (I think?). And they kept babbling about being infected when they where alone...?? Huh? The biggest pet peeve I had was the filming. Like I said, I understand what they where trying to do, with a dark psychological thriller, but the film lighting was absolutely horrible. It looks like somebody took their hand held camcorder outside in the woods, with nothing but moonlight, and filmed the movie. 85% of the time your pausing the movie trying to figure out what character is on the screen. Finally you just give up, hoping that they will do or say something so you know what is going on. I even turned all the lights off in the house wondering if maybe that would help, and I still could barely tell what was going on. And the only way you could really tell the characters apart was what they looked like, considering the lack of personality. So needless to say, who's talking, who's tied up, and who's running around in the rain is totally lost.

So, what or who is Dead Mary? What is the deal with the drops of blood in the bathroom? Or the guy sleeping on the couch who is the first killed. Why are the killed characters coming back as Zombies, and why does that other guy beat the crap out of, and hack up the zombie looking for answers. Answers to what? And why is it, after he beats the crap out of the zombie, and tears it's face apart, it is totally healed and back to normal moments later when it's wife comes to see it. I assume she died in the fire? Where did the bearded guy and the two ladies go off into the woods, leaving the other two at the house? Where did they go? What is up with the ending, and what happened to the girl, who was apparently possessed by dead Mary? Oh yeah, and where is everybody else in the town to begin with? And who the hell is Ted, and where is he? Uggg, it was just way to rushed. If they took the time to actually lay down the story, and filmed it better, maybe the questions above could actually be answered. You can always assume the answers though, and fill in the blanks yourself if that helps. Otherwise it all adds up to one huge and very boring movie.