Dead Mary

FEBRUARY 18, 2007

GENRE: CRAP, POSSESSION
SOURCE: DVD (OWN COLLECTION)

A lot of horror movies combine a (better) horror movie (in this case, The Thing) with Lawrence Kasdan’s A Big Chill. It’s not a bad idea; many horror films are criticized for their lack of character development, so starting things off with a group of friends talking and bonding before the killing and what not begins can only help, right? Well if the characters are all unlikable assholes like they are in Dead Mary, I don't want to wait to see them get killed. In fact, I’d be fine if the movie began with them being killed and spent the rest of its running time showing the scenery.

In this amazingly bad film, there are seven characters, four girls and three guys. The three guys are all jerks of varying degree. One girl is an idiot. Another is stuck up. A third is a slut. Then there’s Dominique Swain (the only recognizable face, though the slut girl looks sort of like Jensen Dagget from Friday the 13th VIII), who just comes off as a bitch. After 40 minutes or so of us getting to know these people no one would want to know, they play Bloody Mary (excuse me, sorry, ‘Dead’ Mary, it's TOTALLY different). But instead of bringing some ghoulish figure or ghost to life, it just possesses a couple of them, and they go on to.... mainly just talk more about what assholes they are. The slut slept with the bitch’s boyfriend. Jerk #2 cheated on his wife (the idiot), so the idiot slept with Jerk #3. Then they all kill each other.

There, I just saved you an ungodly 110 minutes.

To be fair, some of the makeup effects are good, and since they have no weapons, they improvise and make some with garden tools and things like that, wrapped with duct tape. Any movie where duct tape plays a part in saving your life is automatically kind of OK. But that’s all this movie has going for it. If you’re not a fan of industrial adhesive, there’s precious little in the film that will hold your interest.

What say you?