Director Mary Harron taught us with the darkly satirical American Psycho both that it takes an outsider to take on a film with American in the title (see also Brits Sam Mendes - American Beauty - and Ridley Scott - American Gangster) and that any idea that women aren't capable of making original horror pictures is ridiculous. For all that it had a Canadian director, American Psycho is an American production and so is ineligible here, but it does lead us on to the Soska sisters and their Canadian body modification story American Mary. The so-called Twisted Twins (Jen and Sylvia) write and direct an unusual take on what is usually the most unpleasant and often deeply misogynistic sub-genres of horror, the rape-revenge story and do so with an unusually feminist angle and an atypically complex female lead in Katharine Isabelle's damaged surgeon Mary. Isabelle (currently seen on US TV in Hannibal) has established herself as the offbeat scream queen of choice for contemporary Canadian horror after roles in the Ginger Snaps trilogy (more on that later), 13 Eerie, and Torment, and had the part of Mary specifically written for her by the Soskas. Ultimately American Mary, the first feature from the Soskas after their short Dead Hooker In A Trunk, runs out of places to go before knowing how to finish, but still manages to demonstrate a great deal of original and interesting storytelling and a genuine interest and sympathy for subcultures of the strange and freaky. Mary finds more of a home as an underground surgeon performing extreme body modifications on people who, for example, want to become a human sex doll or have a set of horns than she ever did amongst the snobbery of medical school.