Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the lamest of them all?
SPOILER ALERT: IT'S THIS MOVIE!
I Believe This Movie's Crappy
I'm surprised there aren't more movies about Bloody Mary. It's one of the biggest ghost stories and it hardly ever makes it to the big screen. But, there are quite a few direct-to-DVD Bloody Mary movies. So, I decided that both this week and next week will be taking a look at two Bloody MAry DVD features. Starting with Bloody Mary! Which actually isn't technically about Bloody Mary. Yeah. Directed and written by Richard Valentine (The Taken), the film follows Natalie (Kim Tyler, Nowheresville) travels to a small town in order to investigate the disappearance of her sister, Nicole (Jessica Valentine, The Taken). There, she discovers the secret of her sister's disappearance my be related to the town's old legend of a mental institution inmate who was obsessed with mirrors. She works with Doctor Daniels (Jaason Simmons, Baywatch) and thinks that a mysterious girl named Jenna (Danni Ravden) might know more than she's telling.
The Legend Doesn't Continue
As you'd might expect, the film never caught on. Despite it being based on a famous story and it's plentiful nudity (I'll get to that later), the film never got all that popular, even though it is the more well known of the two films we'll be looking at. There are hardly any images of it online that isn't of the nudity and no one from the cast has gone on to do anything, except for Cory Monteith, who has a very small role in this film, where he spouts some exposition, paints a picture naked and then gets killed. And now that he's on Glee, I'm sure he's happy people forgot about this movie.
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| I couldn't find any pictures from the movie, so here are some pictures from the Supernatural episode about Bloody Mary. |
Not Quite Bloody Mary
So, yeah, the film isn't really about Bloody Mary. While there isn't really one singular story about Bloody Mary, it's fairly clear that this movie isn't about THE Bloody Mary. See, in this film, Mary was a patient who was obsessed with mirrors, who escaped from her institution and died in the tunnels beneath the hospital. The staff nicknamed her Bloody Mary because of the legend and because all mental institution doctors are assholes. On top of that, the story isn't even about people saying "Bloody Mary" in mirrors and dying. No, in this film, somehow, Jenna finds Mary's spirit in a mirror in the tunnels and works with her because...? The biggest problem with this film is that it's story is an absolute mess. We are told that Jenna is working with Mary and an unnamed hospital patient to release Mary's spirit or whatever. But it's never explained how this works, or why Jenna cares. As a result, Jenna basically becomes the real villain of the movie, as the hospital patient is locked up in the hospital and Mary is no help. In all seriousness, the amount of appearances Mary makes in this movie can be counted on one hand. She has more in common with the drink than with the urban legend.
Reveal Yourself
As a horror film, in fails too. The scary seem to have missed the flight. There aren't even any attempts at jump scares! That's mostly due to the fact the Jenna is the main villain and Mary, when we do see his, is always in the shadows and is hardly shown, probably due to the film's relatively small budget. On top of that, the film features a large amount of nudity, most of which doesn't even make sense. The most blatant is the fact that when the girls (I.E. Jenna) communicates with Mary, they have to be naked while they do it. The film even starts off with the sister naked doing the ritual. The film half-heartedly attempts to justify this, but it falls on deaf ears. Actress Ravden takes most of this nudity brunt. She appears naked three time in the film from quite a while each time and there isn't a single time it makes sense. In one scene, she kills a guy by luring him into a room filled with broken mirrors and giving him to Mary. All while naked. Which makes no sense seeing as how she only needs to be naked during the ritual and not during the rest of the time, but whatever. That's not even the worst plothole in that scene.
The guy she kills knows Jenna is the bad guy. So why would he follow her into her trap? Even if he thinks somethings wrong with her, he know she wants to kill him and finding her naked in a dark place alone is probably not a good thing! The film doesn't seem to grasp that if the want to make the attractive 20-something, blonde Jenna an actual threat, then making her be nude in all her villain scenes probably wasn't the best idea. It's too bad to because Ravden is actually the best actress in the film. The only time the entire movie comes close to interesting is when Jenna kidnaps Natalie and brings her to Mary's lair. Jenna summons Mary, while she's naked, of course and the ghost finally is revealed. Kinda. The movie seems to be setting up a final confrontation between a revenge seeking reporter, a crazy naked girl and a freaking flying ghost in an old abandonded building. But, nope. Mary kills Jenna, for literally no reason, Natalie breaks the already broken mirror and Mary is somehow defeated. Thanks for all your money, folks!
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| This episode was WAY better. |
The Verdict
I really haven't even scratched the surface on the film's terrible writing. Like how at one point, Natalie sees her dead sister's ghost, who is never seen again. Or the doctor ridiculous plot twist. The the crappy sequel hook. The film is just a mess. The plot makes no sense and it isn't even based on Bloody Mary. The film wastes a surprisingly good villain by forcing her to be naked all the time. The main hero is completely forgettable And worst still, it's about as scary as a Pepsi can. Bloody Mary needs to be busted. Bloody Mary (2006) gets 2 stars out of 6. See you next week for part two of this Bloody Mary double feature!
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