Softwing Most undeservingly overhyped movie of all time??

Skunkyrate Gripping story with well-crafted characters

Matialth Good concept, poorly executed.

Beystiman It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

loomis78-815-989034 A group of late twenty-something friends meet at a cabin for a long weekend of reliving old times. These boring friends talk and talk for hours about their personal baggage and who slept with whom almost to the point you forget you're watching a horror film, or are supposed to be. Eventually they play the "say Dead Mary in the mirror" game with a candle with the idea that the spirit of the dead witch will appear. Instead the spirit possesses one of them but no one including the audience who it is. Borrowing heavily from John Carpenter's "The Thing", minus the style and suspense, the characters start to distrust one another. This movie had potential to be a minor success but the lack of any action for such a long period of time sinks it fast. There is a few nice moments, like when the thing…I mean a character, reveals herself to another character in a shack in the woods. There isn't much gore to speak of and what little there is unconvincing. The unknown cast is good but the movie needed to shift gears and actually get scary for it to work and it just doesn't.

hnt_dnl DEAD MARY (2007) is a very uniquely interesting horror film. It plays mind games with both it's characters and the moviegoer. The 7 characters Kim (Dominique Swain), Eve (Marie-Josee Colburn), Baker (Steve McCarthy), Lily (Maggie Castle), Dash (Michael Majeski), Amber (Reagan Pasternak), and Matt (Jefferson Brown) all find themselves in over their heads big time! The initial vibe is that it's just a friendly get-together in a remote cabin amongst friends, then it takes an oddly eerie turn into horror.There is an air of isolation that permeates throughout DEAD MARY once the horror starts and the opening sequence personifies this with Kim and Matt seemingly in the middle of nowhere on the roadside on their way to meet their old college friends Ted, Eve, Baker, and Dash (along with Baker's younger girlfriend Lily) at Ted's cabin. Ted himself is nowhere to be found after they all arrive and I think never showing us what happened to Ted adds to the film's isolated tone. A lingering question that I have is that I wonder if Ted was attacked/possessed before the others arrived and is he the one that initiated all this? And perhaps the Dead Mary game they played that night is just a coincidence/MacGuffin to throw both the characters and the viewers off. It's never really explained in the film.Now just in terms of what's going on with the characters we see, the viewer actually knows who is responsible, but not how it all started, or even how (or if) it all ends! The most interesting aspect of DEAD MARY is that instead of settling for being just a mindless horror flick with stupid puns where a literal monster is killing off the characters, it uses the device of tying the possessions into the personal lives of the characters, but in a very tongue-in-cheek, all too honest way. Before the possessions, you could tell these old friends were kind of jaded and uneasy with each other and with life in general, then the possession releases brings all their mistrust, secrets, inhibitions, and shortcomings to the forefront.The real success of DEAD MARY lies in it's utter ambiguity about what is really happening. Is it a simple possession by Dead Mary (spurred by the game they played that first night) that is causing all this? Is it some other demon or spirit and the Dead Mary game was coincidence? Is it the actual apocalypse, which would explain the lack of other people around?!I thought the ensemble acting was very good amongst the cast, with standout characters being Baker, Eve, and the scenery-chewing Dash. The actors were very convincing playing longtime friends with secrets. DEAD MARY is a solid horror yarn with an ambiguity and storyline that I think warrants repeated viewing.

matttieee123 I expected this film to be a classic teen slasher flick which was what I actually wanted to see but there was just so much missing from it that didn't even meet the standards for that. The acting is very good, especially from Dominique Swain but the atmosphere of the movie is so depressing that there needs to be more action and less talking. I know that sounds typical but this film failed at making scares without blood and gore (like "When a stranger calls"). The script is very original and the setting of the lake is beautiful but all of this was taken for granted. This film could've been an awesome horror flick but its more of a thriller/drama genre because the first half is all talking. Also the film is based on "Bloody Mary" the game but the context really had nothing to do with it as we saw no ghost of Mary! This film isn't horrible, but don't expect any scares from it and do not be fooled by the DVD cover or the R rating. All in all an okay movie that could have been so much better.

Paul Andrews Dead Mary is set at an isolated log cabin situated deep in the woods. Couples Kim (Dominique Swain) & Matt (Jefferson Brown), Lilly (Maggie Castle) & Bryce (Steven McCarthy), Amber (Reagan Pasternak) & Dash (Michael Majeski) plus odd one out Eve (Marie-Josée Colburn) who is on her own have all been invited to the cabin for the weekend by their friend Ted. There they hang out &, well not much else really. Suddenly someone comes up with the bright idea of playing Dead Mary, a campfire tale that states if you say 'Dead Mary' three times into a mirror said deceased female named Mary, who was a Witch when she could be described as Alive Mary, will come back from the dead & kill everyone. No-one really takes it seriously but do it anyway, then by the nights end they begin to wish they hadn't as Matt turns up mutilated in the woods possessed by something evil...This American Canadian co-production was directed by Robert Wilson & one has to say I though Dead Mary is a rather odd little teen horror film & a not particularly good one either. The script for Dead Mary is credited to Peter Sheldrick & Christopher Warre Smets although according to the IMDb while it started out as a typical teen slasher with a ghostly Dead Mary zombie rising from the lake to kill various teens director Wilson decided to change everything & have some unseen unknown & unexplained evil force possess the teens one-by-one & thus turn it into some sort of modern teens in peril in the woods in a log cabin mix between The Evil Dead (1981) & the body-snatching plot of The Thing (1982) as the second half of Dead Mary plays out exactly the same as John Carpenter's masterpiece with it trying to create a real sense of paranoia & mistrust. To be brutally honest Dead Mary is a mess, the first thirty minutes are so boring it's untrue, after ten minutes & absolutely nothing had happened I was becoming bored, after fifteen minutes I was past bored, after twenty minutes of nothing happening I was praying for some sort of dramatic incident & by the twenty five minute mark & still literally nothing of any significance had happened I had all but given up on it. Upto this point the entire film has been nothing but really dull dialogue between really dull character's, nothing that happens has any relevance to later on anyway which makes it even worse. Eventually the film kicks into gear & the body stealing plot starts to develop, to be fair this part of the film is alright but with such a small cast of character's there's not much the makers could do with the idea, they also reveal who is an evil clone far too easily & it's annoying to see people keep splitting up all the time. Also anyone possessed by whatever is possessing them seems intent on upsetting people by telling them that their boy/girlfriend is cheating on them! It's just odd to see a mutilated Matt for instance just sit there & tell everyone that their lover is cheating on them for no apparent reason. The plot is a bit of a mess, there is no solid or reasonable explanation for anything that happens, the ending is one of those frustrating ones which just cuts to black at a really annoying moment & leaves everything up in the air & whatever happened to Ted anyway?Director Wilson does alright here actually, the film has a very laid back & lazy feel to it with slow camera moves, lingering shots & a pace that at times if it was any slower the film would be going backwards. The gore levels are none existent, there's a couple of dead bodies, a burnt arm & some blood splatter but this isn't much off a PG. I don't remember any nudity either. The film is well shot with a fair bit of style & I did like the atmosphere of the final twenty odd minutes with the dark woods & pouring rain.Technically the film is pretty impressive with nice cinematography, there's no quick 'blink & you'll miss it' editing or shaky hand held camcorder shots either. Dead Mary certainly looks nice, it's just a shame the script is a total mess from start to finish. Apparently shot in Ontario in Canada. The acting is pretty good, while not Oscar worthy no-one stands out as being particularly bad & the girls look rather nice which helps.Dead Mary is a really odd film, the first thirty minutes will put most into a coma while the rest of it is some odd mix of Candyman (1992) with the whole urban myth surrounding saying someone's name three times The Evil Dead & The Thing but doesn't come close to being as good as any of those. I can't really see who would get anything out of Dead Mary I really don't.