Verdict
Summary
A systematic horror film set almost entirely aboard a boat, Mary doesn’t offer any surprises, but if you’re a diehard fan of Gary Oldman or of horror thrillers set on boats, then this one might be of some appeal to you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to enjoy it.
Plot: In MARY, David (Academy Award Winner Gary Oldman) is a struggling blue-collar captain looking to make a better life for his family. Strangely drawn to an abandoned ship that is up for auction, David impulsively buys the boat, believing it will be his family’s ticket to happiness and prosperity.
Review: There’s a ghost ship out there, lingering around the Bermuda Triangle, just waiting to be found to begin its course once again. On a fateful day when a hardworking family man named David (Gary Oldman) sees that the boat – called Mary – for sale at auction, he sees it as his ticket to captaining charter boat tours. He buys it for a song – which adds up to his entire nest egg that he has cultivated with his exasperated wife (Emily Mortimer) – and they spruce it up and take Mary and their two daughters and two others for its maiden voyage. Only a few days later, and everyone on the ship begins a process of a haunting by a spirit of a witch that once sailed on her and was hung and then drowned out near the Bermuda Triangle more than a hundred years ago. The witch’s spirit has done this at least three other times over the course of a hundred years with other families who took the ship out on a voyage, and every single time the witch claimed the lives of the children aboard in the exact location where she was executed … and she’s about to do it again.
A systematic horror film set almost entirely aboard a boat, Mary doesn’t offer any surprises, but if you’re a diehard fan of Gary Oldman or of horror thrillers set on boats (Dead Calm, Visitors, and Ghost Ship immediately come to mind), then this one might be of some appeal to you, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to enjoy it. The pace is middling, the horror elements are there but not exactly fresh or exciting, and Oldman isn’t enough to salvage or energize the movie. The story plays out exactly the way you think it will, and while director Michael Goi’s take on the genre is to play it out exactly as written, the film could’ve used a few more jolts, creeps, or new ways to explore the material.
The newly released DVD and Blu-ray of Mary includes “The Making of Mary,” and “Family at Sea: The Cast of Mary,” two supplements on the disc.
