Mary (I) (2019) User Reviews

All at sea.....

[s3276169 · 5/10 · 17 October 2019]

Mary is one of those films that sets sail but has no real sense of direction. Its biggest short coming in my opinion is the premise is sound but the setting is wrong.

A modestly sized family yacht, simply doesn't provide enough physical space and as a consequence scope, to meet the expectations, this horror aspires to. Its as if, for example, Friday the 13th, was set in a phone booth. its far too constrained and has to fall back on drawn out physiological tension, in a vain attempt, to compensate.

The result is a slow, predictable and ultimately, rather anti climatic film, that takes the viewer nowhere interesting. That's in spite of a strong cast, quality acting and decent cinematography.

Marginally watchable but that said, there are far better horror films with a nautical bent on offer, like 80's classic, The Fog. 5/10 from me.

Tragically flawed framing sequence ruins an otherwise decent movie.

[bbretall-1 · 4/10 · 18 October 2019]

This movie had a great trailer. Gary Oldman & Emily Mortimer, 2 great actors in a ghost story on a small ship at sea. It looked really good. Unfortunately the movie was tragically flawed because of a clumsy framing device. Not a spoiler since it hits you in the 1st 2 minutes of the film: They start out with the "after it happened" thing with Emily Mortimer on shore after the "tragedy at sea" and being interrogated by the FBI. The movie is then told in flashback. If this was not bad enough, at multiple times in the movie, just as tension is building they CUT BACK TO THE INTERROGATION, effectively killing the suspense. The "payoff" that the interrogation sequence builds up to is completely not worth it. The movie, in my opinion, would be immensely better if they just cut out ALL of the after the fact interrogation stuff and just played it with the straight in the moment stuff. It like if Kubrick opened The Shining with Shelley Duvall being questioned by local Police after the events at the Overlook asking her if she did something to her husband, and then cut back to this every 10 minutes or so throughout the film. We would not be remembering The Shining as a classic of suspense horror today if they had taken this ham-handed route.

A poor flick

[851222 · 5/10 · 27 September 2019]

Greetings from Lithuania.

"Mary" (2019) is a disappointing horror flick, even if i did not expected anyting from it. I saw at the movie theater, without knowing anything about it, were it was shown without any advertisement or anything like that - and i do understand why - because it was so poor.

Although it has an OK premise which could have turned into a good movie, unfortunately it was the writing which derailed this flick. It even stars Gary Oldman in a "give me that paycheck" role, and he was good in this film, given the material.

Overall, a nice premise couldn't save this flick from being blow average. Its not terrible, but its a poor one.

Not very scary Mary

[BA_Harrison · 3/10 · 25 August 2019]

Trapped on the open sea in a haunted boat is an oft-seen horror movie scenario, but rarely has it been used with as little imagination as in Mary. In telling his nautical tale of terror, director Michael Goi employs so many hackneyed techniques that even the talents of Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer cannot prevent the film from being a colossal waste of time.

Introducing his film at Frightfest, Goi claimed to have over 18,000 films in his collection, so one wonders why he directs like he's only ever seen a handful, and bad ones at that. One might think that with such a wealth of inspiration, he could have come up with something a little more creative... something that didn't rely so heavily on obvious supernatural jump scares accompanied by obligatory loud noises. The scenes intended to have me throwing my popcorn in the air in fright actually had me holding my head in dismay: this is about as basic as horror movies get.

3/10. I imagine that It'll be a case of abandon ship for many who dare to sail these treacherous waters.

Good actors vs. good acting

[kosmasp · 5/10 · 27 October 2019]

It's actually not so much the ability of the actors to act (I don't think anybody will see Gary Oldman and doubt he can act), but it is the script and the horror movie cliches/tropes that will likely get you quite upset. To say the least. And you also have other people in here (Emily Mortimer), who are way above anything in depth, that the movie can offer them.

Having said all that and all the things that are predictable, the movie can still be enjoyable to a certain degree/level. You have to be a fan and not mind the flaws that are littered throughout the running time.

Not a scary Mary.

[nigelmacdonald · 3/10 · 13 October 2019]

What on earth is Gary Oldman doing in this very low budget and formulaic ghost story? Apart from a few cheap jump scares this is very slow and boring. It has been done better loads of times before and has very little originality.

Apparently the story was lost at sea.

[S_Soma · 2/10 · 14 October 2019]

Anyone who's read a few of my previous reviews will undoubtedly be sick of hearing it again, but it's a matter of granite truth: story is everything, even for a movie. If you have a great story, many of the other elements of a movie can be rubbish, and as long as they aren't completely unforgivable, the movie will still be okay. But if you have a crap story, then it's going to be a crap movie and that's the inevitable outcome.

MARY, since it has a crap story (or NO story depending on your perspective), is a crap movie. And that as nice a spin as you can give it.

Almost all of the other elements of MARY are good or excellent. Good production values, some "namebrand" actors, story concept that springs from the incredibly rich tradition of the supernatural so associated with the sea and ships, and so on. It even has a somewhat original/inventive script idea as its basis: a group of people having to deal with a hostile ghost in the isolated and claustrophobic conditions on a small boat.

LOTS of sea-based and boat-based ghost stories abound in horror literature. The Flying Dutchman, an endless stream of ghost and horror stories birthed by the true story of the Mary Celeste (of which I've always been convinced that "Fire in the Galley Stove" by William Outerson was such an example), "The Derelict" by Hodgson, and so on.

You might be tempted to think that there just isn't enough context to write a great story around the sea, a small boat and a handful of people. But we know that's not true; Hemingway did it in "The Old Man and the Sea" and won a Pulitzer Prize doing it. So we know that it CAN be done.

While there are exceptions, I usually include a little preview of the story as part of my reviews, but MARY is one of those exceptions. The story is so shabby and its elements so overused you can summarize the entire thing in two sentences:

There's this female ghost of sketchy origins that haunts a boat christened "Mary". A family buys the boat, refits it, and on its freshly renovated maiden voyage, the family and a couple of friends start trying to kill each other by virtue of the ghost's evil influence and, as you might expect, things end badly. The end.

When you think about it, this really isn't an actual story as such. At best it's THE SHINING with saltwater and with everybody taking turns playing Jack Nicholson. And everybody acting crazy and trying to kill each other for no reason other than ghostly "influence" doesn't really constitute a story in any legitimate sense. It's just people behaving badly at random. With jazz hands.

Personally, I am so thoroughly SICK of the "the devil made me do it" concept I could just throw up when a movie drifts in that direction. The everybody-woke-up-and-it-was-all-a-dream writer's ultimate childish copout would be Pulitzer material in comparison at this point.

It really is a shame. MARY had great bones, as it were, for what could have been an excellent movie. I don't know how, but somebody just forgot to add a story to it.

Launch it into the Bermuda Triangle

[nebk · 4/10 · 17 October 2019]

The character Sarah played by Emily Mortimer at one point in the movie says " Something Is Wrong Here." And upon watching the film I have to agree. That something is the whole movie. It is a bland affair with a very weak story, predictable scares and not much else.

The fact that it has Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer in lead roles makes "Mary" even worse because they try as much as they can but don't have much to work with. It turns out that the ship called Mary is cursed and it always ends up going in the same direction and that in three previous instances crew members or their family members have disappeared while sailing it. There is a vengeful ghost on board that slowly drives people insane and that's not good news for David (Gary Oldman), his family or first mate as they are either being possessed or trying to kill eachother and themselves. There is also an uninteresting back story that is mostly there to extend the run time.

Overall a weak attempt with little to offer. Watch The Fog (Original Version) or Ghost Ship if you feel ike watching a horror with a nautical theme.

Too many wannabe critics.

[McCulloch-Eliza · 6/10 · 14 November 2019]

It's one of those movies you'll go and check on IMDb to see the ratings, see 1 star, OMG! Cringe. Keep scrolling and find allot of negitive reviews, but you'll see the odd one or two that say it's a good or average movie, I go with the latter, I thought the acting was above board and the idea and setting were good, as is the background of the ship in question, it touches on the Bermuda triangle and such, it's not an amazing film, and it won't win any awards, but its one that'll Keep your attention, just go into it with an open mind and you'll enjoy it!!

This was a great horror movie must watch!

[haleylynn87 · 8/10 · 21 October 2019]

I am a horror movie fanatic. I have seen every worth while horror film and then some not so worth while & this was definitely worth watching. Acting is good ,believable , story was horrific & this was something different that we really enjoyed. If you enjoy ghost stories & well produced horror films this is a must watch! I can't understand how it only has a 4 star rating I almost gave it a 10 !

Entirely Acceptable

[sellranger · 6/10 · 14 October 2020]

Okay, so there's nothing new here, or particularly original, but from the get go at least there are characters on display and they are behaving believably. Makes you a little more vested in the situation as it unfolds. I don't know that the flashback structure of it helped any, but what most folks want to know is "was it scary?" or "was it stupid?" For my tastes it was involving enough, with a few creepy vibes but nothing really exceptional. I could have done without the lazy go to of repeated nightmares in order to have something unnerving happen. Make the shocks part of the story! Make them part of the situation! We lose investment if we expect every unusual occurrence to just be a harmless dream. But that being said, at least it wasn't stupid the rest of the time and I never had the urge to fast forward thru it. Entirely acceptable. But I doubt I'll ever watch it again. There needs to be an option with the streaming services between "liked" and "disliked".

boring and not exciting

[a291072 · 4/10 · 17 October 2019]

Even Nicolas "I will take any acting job for money" Cage passed this one. That should say enough. The movie is boring and takes too long building up the characters and story. And when it finally should take off, it never really does. It's not scary, not exciting and no fun. Calling this "horror" is a complete joke.

There's Something About Mary

[lavatch · 3/10 · 5 December 2019]

In the bonus track of the DVD, actress Emily Mortimer described "Mary" as a film "about a real family, marriage, and love." Indeed, the Greers were a loving family with the skipper father David, the caring mom Sarah, and the two girls, Lyndsey and little Mary. It was precisely because they were such a nice family that the film was so unpleasant in chronicling their disintegration in an ill-starred venture at sea in the Caribbean.

Captain Dave notices at an auction an old skiff called the "Mary," which, for him, is the find of a lifetime. But, he will definitely have a case of buyer's remorse for purchasing it and refurbishing it. He has even read that in its three previous voyages, the German vessel had never returned its human travelers to the world of the living. Now, the horror will be vested for a fourth time on the unsuspecting Greer family.

As the curse of the "Mary" unfolds, it was disappointing that it was never made clear who actually is Mary, what is her story, and why she must voraciously continue to claim human victims (especially children!) from her voyages. This background would have given more substance to the film, avoiding a pure horror scenario.

SPOILER FOLLOWS: At the close of the film, it appears as if the curse of Mary has afflicted Sarah, who will continue to turn the wives of noble seafarers into widows through eternity. For this reason, there needed to be more of the history of the curse.

The final loose end in the film was the sketchy background on a moment of weakness of Sarah, when she was unfaithful to Dave in a one-timer. It was never made clear in the film if the voyage on the "Mary" was retribution for Sarah's momentary lapse in the commission of one of the seven deadly sins. Like the 1988 film starring Cameron Diaz, there was clearly "something about Mary" in that old rusty, barnacled-clad skiff, but it was never fleshed out completely in the film.

Boring Mary

[cherr · 4/10 · 13 October 2019]

Gary Oldman what ya doing? I watched this because of you.

What a snooze fest

[bangel3322 · 2/10 · 24 October 2019]

Boring, pointless film with an empty concept and awful, awful acting by Emily Mortimer.

Abandoned at sea (unfinished movie I guess?)

[kuarinofu · 4/10 · 14 October 2019]

Mary 2019 started good, but as it went on it started having problems.

The playground for the spirit is not that big and thus people just teleport all over the place. You can never tell where anyone is and they just jump out randomly.

The whole isolation at sea thing is underdeveloped, they never do anything clever with this. The spirit's intentions are also unclear, sometimes it possesses people and makes them suicide, sometimes it makes them do something else. Sometimes it appears physically and does something on its own. It looks like they wanted to put every spirit ability into this. It's just confusing. You have to establish what your spirit can or cannot do in order for this to work.

Overall the movie feels disjointed, random and the ending is supposed to indicate that they were unable to finish it due to a hurricane (I guess). Or something like that.

It had potential with some scares and claustrophobic environments but as it seems it was never finished and was probably rushed to release.

If I'd want to watch an isolation sea horror I'd go and re-watch Below (2002). This one is not even a movie per se.

Weak story, unscary but lots of good jump scares

[sophaljonesy · 4/10 · 30 September 2019]

Mary is an unscary in-your-face horror that tries to be intelligent. It features the talent of Gary Oldman, and strong performances by Emily Mortimer, but even their dedication could not save this movie from sinking. There is a weak climax, and the lack of subtlety makes the story dull. It could have been more subtle by making it seem like one person is losing his or her mind, or focusing on how the characters descend to madness and culminate in a horrific climax. However, the story is weak and even the shots are done poorly. It fails to create claustrophobia or dread. The movie does deliver decent jump scares but its over reliance on this technique shows that it is not a scary story at all. If you are expecting a tense psychological horror on par with The Shallows, you will be sorely disappointed. If you are expecting a haunted house on water, it still fails. Don't waste time if you want to see it for itself. But if you want to see people screaming at the jump scares, you would probably enjoy it.

Ignore Bad Reviews...

[songod-95003 · 7/10 · 7 November 2019]

I do not know what some of these armchair reviewers were looking for. They claim there is no story. They claim there are no scares. They claim...

They I believe never saw the movie!

Then again maybe they were expecting some sort of "Ghost Ship" type of story. Well, this was a house boat and not an ocean liner so no ship of 1,000 dead people.

What I found it to be was a well acted well written story about a cursed ship with a long history of tragedies. It seduces it next owner to be, Oldman, from the moment he sees her in spite of the rough shape she is in. He sacrifices everything to buy her and take his family away from what he feels is a go nowhere life. He believes he can make money on fishing cruises, sight seeing, and touristy things like that. Not unrealistic, but yet not solid enough to "bet the farm on".

Right away crazy things start happening.

Most of the tale is told in flashback as the wife is being interrogated by the FBI. Maybe that put off some of the reviewers here.

Gary Oldman, assuming he filmed this after his impressive performance as Winston Churchill, must have been enjoying the no make-up, t-shirt and shorts attire he wore for the duration!

Enjoyable!

Surprisingly, all around, BAD

[cherreb · 1/10 · 7 June 2020]

Never thought I would see Gary Oldman and Emily Mortimer in a film this bad, and their acting was awful too!! Whatever they both got paid it was too much. It's like they both had a big bill come due and just took whatever they could at the time, and then didn't care about actually being believable doing it. So disappointed, esp with Gary :(

Nice movie, but with a minor flaw

[bradsturgis2010 · 9/10 · 15 January 2020]

This movie has an excellent story and setting. It manages to create a claustrophobic environment in a ocean environment. The acting is solid and the direction/cinematography are wonderful! There are several beautiful shots of coastlines and wide open water.

The only thing that took me out of the movie a bit was the framing device that was used. It's not that it was badly done. It's just that by cutting back and forth between the story and the framing it made the movie feel like a TV show at times.

Overall it's a good movie that is worth checking out. Especially if you are looking for a horror movie that has a different setting than your typical haunted house.

Good Made for TV Horror

[stephenherman · 7/10 · 4 February 2020]

Don't listen to the negative reviews. This isn't going to be in your top 10 horror films but it's still a decent movie. The story is engaging enough to keep you watching to see what happens. It's not particularly scary or super original but seeing a ghost movie contained to a sailboat made it feel a bit fresh.

The acting was good. The characters felt real & made logical decisions for the most part. The story had enough wind in its sails to keep pushing forward. It just needed a proper budget. So don't go in expecting Ghost Ship, but trust me it's a decent film. Enjoy!

Pointless but still gets a 2.

[LordCommandar · 2/10 · 14 October 2019]

This movie was utterly pointless. But I will still give it 2....the end.

Don't watch it if you're tired, you won't make it.

[deloudelouvain · 5/10 · 5 December 2019]

I watched this movie and the only thrill I had was the fact I had to fight to stay awake. I was a bit tired though but a good movie would have kept me awake, and in this case it just wasn't. There is no horror at all in Mary, only a couple lousy jump scares that would not scare a five year old. The acting is boring, just like the whole story. I don't say they are bad actors but even with excellent actors you couldn't make this a good movie. In a few words, Mary is a snooze fest not worth your time.

Story had potential but bad execution.

[Majkati · 4/10 · 13 October 2019]

The story about a haunted ship and a woman that haunts them while they have nowhere to run sounds pretty scary and interesting.

But this movie had more drama than horror. There are like 3 "scary" scenes that aren't even that long or scary. I felt like I was gonna fall asleep the whole time.

Unimaginable pile of feces.

[Labowski69 · 2/10 · 25 October 2019]

The flaw in oldmans accent alone should be enough to make u want to hurl into a small british truffle basket. What in gods good name are we watching here ? Looks like Gary needed a down payment on a chalet. I don't even know where to begin on this one and I will not. Don't. Just trust me and don't. You will regret it.