Today’s horror fans don’t seem to understand that you don’t
need a group of nubile teens that look like they walked off the pages of a
fashion magazine and you don’t need gore laden effects to make an effective
ghost story. The two greatest ghost films ever made, THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL
and THE UNINVITED, had none of these things and yet to this day provide solid
scares. So when MARY came to me I wondered if it would be up to the challenge.
The story opens with a ship in distress and few survivors
being picked up. The setting moves to an interrogation room where Sarah (Emily
Mortimer) is being questioned by Detective Clarkson (Jennifer Esposito). Before
she will allow her to see her two daughters, Clarkson wants to know what took
place on the boat and to find out if Sarah is a murderer or just plain crazy.
And so Sarah begins her story.
Sarah’s husband Dave (Gary Oldman) is a ship’s captain
working for a tourist company in Florida who has dreamed of owning his own ship
to take people out to sea. When he and his partner Mike (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo)
go to look at a potential ship, David is drawn to a battered old ship that was
abandoned at sea and towed in by the Coast Guard. A ships masthead of a woman
leads the ship and intrigues him. He buys the ship and insists with a little
work it will be the perfect boat for the family.
They clean the ship up and prepare for a test run sailing
across the Atlantic. With their youngest daughter Mary (Chloe Perrin) who
thinks the boat is named after her, teenage daughter Lindsey (Stephanie Scott),
her boyfriend to be Tommy (Owen Teague) and Mike, they prepare to set sail.
Strange things happen before leaving as Tommy takes a picture of the group in
front of the boat only to see an eerie image in the flash as he takes it.
Once at sea stranger things happen. Mary begins talking
about a new friend she’s met on the boat. Then the first night out, Tommy
attacks Mike with a knife. They subdue Tommy and at their first port leave him
to calm down before heading home. They later learn that he hanged himself in
his cell.
As they travel forward we learn more about the family on
board the ship. When Sarah tells David she wants to return he tells her they
can’t, that everything they have is tied into the boat and they must move
forward. But those strange things continue to build. Sarah finds the logs of
the ship and learns that three families have gone completely missing from the
boat in the past. Then Mike goes mad. The question of what is behind this and
if the family will survive is yet to be seen.
The film works on many levels because what is terrifying is
rarely if ever seen. A situation where you have to wonder is it something toxic
on the ship that’s causing this? Is it past relationships? Or is there really
something that haunts those on board? That is what makes the film all the more
mysterious.
Add to that the sense of isolation when you have a boat in
the middle of the ocean and the scares generate themselves. That feeling that
it’s too far to go back and so far from your destination. With nowhere to run
from whatever you are confronting, how do you deal with it?
While Oldman is the selling point of the film and turns in
his usual great performance it is up to Mortimer to carry off this story and
make it work. She does so in spades, having us wonder if this isn’t some story
she dreamed up to explain her actions or if she truly did see something out
there. If she didn’t play the part with conviction it would fall apart.
Fortunately she does an amazing job.
MARY won’t be for all audiences. As I said today’s young
people have a tendency to ignore films that feature adults or that don’t rely
on gore to move the story forward. But horror fans that have been around a
while will find this film a treat. With that in mind I can recommend this one
with ease and hope that others will find it just as satisfying.
No comments:
Post a Comment