| "The
Legend of Bloody Mary" DVD
The Legend of Bloody
Mary proves to be an object lesson in truly bad timing.
Based at least tangentially
on the legend of Bloody Mary (hence the title), it's basically
the story of the legend in a world where this kind of thing actually
happens. And of course when the legend gets to its absolute extension,
the result is predictable enough and a demon / monster / ghost
/ something or other that lives in the mirror starts turning kids
into hamburger. Because, of course, you never see grown men and
women chanting into mirrors so they'd never get pulled into a
mirror by that demon / ghost / monster whatever-thing.
The legend, which has
been told a number of different ways over the years, in this case
basically requires kids to write the names of themselves and anyone
else they want to "mark" for Mary's vengeance on a mirror,
say "I believe in Mary Worth" a few times and then wait.
The killings begin directly after. I've heard it go a few ways
myself--the legend that was big back in my day required you to
tell the mirror--rather, tell Bloody Mary--that you were the one
who killed her son. At the third repetition of this admission
she'd jump out and kill you.
Needless to say, she
did not kill anyone who tried this--and even I might have tried
it in the cheerful idiocy of my boyhood--as there were plenty
of people around to tell the tale.
But anyway, back to
the movie, which alternates between kids playing the game built
on the legend in flashback, a priest trying to explain a parishioner's
nightmares, and flashbacks even farther back showing the original
story behind the legend. Which means we're dealing with about
two layers of flashbacks here, and that's enough to make the story
a little confusing unless you're paying careful attention.
And remember what I
said about this being a study in bad timing? Yeah...the problem
is that this is going to be compared, and not without reason,
to recent release Mirrors. When your big bad lives in the mirror
and favors snatching people inside it,not to mention is able to
influence the movements of others via the manipulation of their
mirror images it's pretty safe to say, hmm...this has kinda been
done already. Makes me wonder if Fox is going to hunt up Lions
Gate for this....
The ending is actually
kind of lousy--when they explain what actually needs to be done
to solve the problem, do something different that still manages
to solve the problem (how do I know? Bloody Mary actually thanks
the main character BEFORE the last detail is accomplished. The
problem was solved at that point), and then tack on the last detail
just so they visibly cover their tracks, you know there's a serious
problem with the narrative. Worse yet, they'll go for a twist
ending on top of it, AFTER the problem's been solved!
The special features
include featurettes with commentary, a section of "Bloody
Mary Testimonials" which intermingles parts of the movie
with people talking about their own Bloody Mary tangles, audio
options, a commentary track, English and Spanish subtitles, and
trailers for The Legend of Bloody Mary, Unemployed, The Morgue,
Artifacts, Restraint, and Dead and Gone.
All in all, bad timing
and an unnecessarily complicated script bring The Legend of Bloody
Mary down to just slightly less than mediocre. They tried to do
too much with entirely too little and they're paying for it with
a poor-grade movie.
The
Legend of Bloody Mary
**
DVD Directed by John Stecenko
Written by Dominick R. Domingo, John Stecenko
Starring Paul Preiss, Robert J. Locke, Caitlin Wachs, Nicole Aiken
Produced by Robert Ahrens
R
93 mins
2008
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