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Mary (2019) Film Review

By: Joseph Perry

Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer, two top-notch and well-known actors, give their best shots in the new horror film Mary, but unfortunately the rest of the movie doesn’t match the quality of their work, except for some fine cinematography. A cliche-ridden plot, along with characters and situations with little backstory, make this effort one for Devil’s Triangle completists and the cinematically curious.

Oldman stars as David, who captains a chartered fishing boat but dreams of owning his own vessel and being his own boss. Without checking first with his wife Sarah (Mortimer), he purchases, for six figures, a dilapidated boat that was discovered adrift with no one on board by the Coast Guard. The couple, their teenaged daughter 

Lindsey (Stefanie Scott of Insidious: Chapter 3  [2015]) , their younger daughter Mary (Chloe Perrin of giant-spider creature feature Itsy Bitsy [2019]), Lindsey’s boyfriend Tommy (Owen Teague of It [2017] and It Chapter Two [2019]), and first mate Mike (Manuel Garcia-Rulfo of the TV series From Dusk Till Dawn [2014–2016]) all renovate the boat in a montage, which is just one of the hoary chestnuts this film offers. They then set sail for a path that will take them straight through the Bermuda Triangle. Once at sea, odd things begin happening, and  astute viewers will have noticed that a witch was mentioned in a traditional sailor’s poem at the very beginning of the film.

Many things are mentioned but not really fleshed out in Mary, such as Sarah having had an affair that she and David are trying to put behind them, and the previous owners of the boat having had similar troubles at sea. Director Michael Goi, who also performed cinematography duties quite masterfully, has a hard time maintaining suspense because the film is told using flashbacks, and from the opening moments, viewers are informed that Sarah and her two daughters are still alive. Some beautifully shot set pieces on the boat and underwater have their legs cut out from under them knowing that no harm will come to these three characters. Anthony Jaswinski’s screenplay holds far less suspense than his terrific 2016 shark thriller The Shallows, with Mary relying mostly on jump scares. Goi does build a certain level of eerie atmosphere on the boat, though.

Oldman is strong as David, who refuses to believe superstitious nonsense even as deadly events continuously occur around him. Mortimer does most of the heavy lifting here, including some physical scenes on board the boat and in the water. Whenever these two fine actors are on screen together, Mary is at its best.

MARY is available on DVD and Blu-ray beginning November 26, 2019 from RLJE Films.  

Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and Horror Fuel (horrorfuel.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom). 

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