On
paper, this evil boat should be way scarier than Christine, because her
passengers will be stranded by the open water. They can’t try to dive out a
window and run for a narrow alleyway. They must remain on the high seas until
they reach port. Unfortunately, that does not seem likely to happen for
everyone, judging from the if-I-had-but-known in media res prologue to Michael
Goi’s Mary, which releases today on
DVD.
David
is tired of sailing other people’s charter boats. He longs to be his own
skipper, but he cannot afford a tourist-worthy boat—or so he thought until he
spied the Mary, an old but seaworthy German sail boat, with a rather evil
looking masthead, now up for auction after the Coast Guard found her abandoned.
With the help of his sidekick-first mate Mike, they will refurbish her and go
into business for themselves. David’s wife Sarah is a bit skeptical, but she
does not have much standing to argue since her husband forgave her infidelity.
The
restoration is quick and uneventful in movie time, so David and family logical
decide to celebrate with a maiden voyage through the Bermuda Triangle. Good
call. Of course, as soon as they are far enough out in international waters,
Mary starts messing with their heads, especially that of their youngest,
ominously also named Mary.
Goi
has a terrific cast at his disposal, but he uses them just enough to keep
diehard horror fans from walking out, switching the channel, or falling asleep.
Weirdly, it is rather interesting to watch Gary Oldman play an average,
everyday guy. He and Emily Mortimer are pretty believable as the loving couple
under extraordinary stress. Manuel Garcia-Rulfo also goes crazy pretty
convincingly as Mike. However, Jennifer Esposito is just hopelessly wasted as
Det. Clarkson, who conducts the framing interrogation with a complete lack of
intuition.
Perhaps
the biggest problem for Mary is it
arrives in the wild and rollicking wake of Rob Grant’s Harpoon, which served up far cleverer and substantially more
entertaining bloody high seas mayhem. Mary
just looks pale and wan in comparison. Regardless, it has one huge, gaping
logical in its narrative. Sailors are notoriously superstitious, so it is
almost impossible to believe David would blithely bid on Mary without doing due
diligence on her prominence. Instead, he waits until they are halfway to
Bermuda to crack open the envelop chronicling the string of past owners who
have gone missing at sea. Sorry, just can’t buy it.
So
maybe Mary is dumb in some ways, but
it isn’t terrible. It just isn’t good enough, especially when Harpoon is readily available. Strictly a
time killer for detox weekends, Mary releases
today on DVD.
