Mary Loss of Soul (2015)

Such a frustrating disappointment

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

MARY LOSS OF SOUL is an indie ghost story with a novel premise: a girl goes missing from her family and returns lacking her soul. That's not bad as it stands, but this low rent film fails to do anything with that concept and the metaphysical concepts are merely discussed in a mundane way rather than properly explored. The film has a nice lakeside setting but is badly acted and frequently boring, with the viewer failing to invest in any of the characters. Old-time actor Nick Mancuso shows up playing a cop and that's about it.

This movie is a clear case of genre confusion. It's a supernatural suspense, not horror. That means the story builds tension through good storytelling and character development. Supernatural stories involve paranormal elements, and the suspense is a slow burn, more Alfred Hitchcock. It doesn't depict violent, gruesome bloody acts which would be horror. It's also not a family/children movie. It's for thinking adults who want to figure out what's happening, why it happened, and how it's going to end. It's hard not to be fascinated by this movie. It has good scary elements. It's chilling, but not terror provoking. There's a deeper, subconscious connection to the mythology of "loss of soul," which is an actual condition. (Look it up, it's interesting) It delivers something very different. If you're looking for gore, you won't like this movie. It's smarter than that. It involves a functional teenage girl who is thrust into extraordinary circumstances - she's lost her soul, but is still alive. Now the fun begins! I read the reviews here and yes, there's no swearing or overt sexuality. This movie breaks some stereotypes, which is why I liked it. I didn't catch some of the nuances and honestly thought I had it figured out from the very beginning and then found out I was wrong. I enjoyed the surprise! If you can get past it being labeled horror, and if you like paranormal and supernatural, and just a Good Movie, you'll really like this one.

I'd make a joke about how this movie lacks any kind of soul, but that would give this movie too much credit. The movie is full of exposition, horrible acting, and some of the worst writing I have seen outside of the Lifetime network. The script is often laughable, but the film is so exhausting and anticlimactic that you would likely get more enjoyment out of reading the synopsis than actually watching it. Essentially, the title explains it all; a girl named Mary loses her soul mysteriously and slowly begins to turn white and pasty, losing interest in life as apparitions begin to appear to her and her family. They eventually decide to hire a medium (shaman) to get her soul back. Next to nothing in the story makes sense and feels cheap and easy. The actor who plays the father is a halfway decent actor but the rest of the cast is downright awful. I think it's amazing that someone was given the funding for this film after looking at the script, and even more so that it made it out of production at all. Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

It's pretty funny actually how people are trying to call this a horror movie. It's not scary. Not only that but the animations were so bad I laughed out loud; Sci-Fy channel movies are better. The whole movie is slow and boring. It's old and tiring. The acting was annoying. The story wasn't good. Also the writer/ director said she wrote this movie in like 2 weeks, and well, we could tell. Hahaha. It was obviously written in such short time. Anybody could realize that. Not to mention that the choice of cast was wrong. I could not connect to any character. The only good actor in the whole entire movie was the Irish psychic. Everyone else was bad. The movie was just plain awful. Walking out of the screening people were laughing at the movie and calling it a joke (cause that's what it is, a big joke). It's not a movie to be proud of and it's not a movie I would be proud of to tell my friends or a stranger on the street that I saw. If you want to see a cheesy, boring, movie filled with bad acting, go ahead. At least you'll laugh at the end at how terrible this movie is.