Resurrection Mary (2005) User Reviews

Oh, my! This is a difficult one to sit through.

[innocuous · 2/10 · 25 April 2012]

I know that it's hard to make a movie, and I truly believe that the director and producer put a lot of effort into this one, but it's got to be depressing to look at a finished film and see something like RM. Forget the acting (which is, coincidentally, quite forgettable) and just look at the plot. I watched this film for about 45 minutes, then backed it up because I figured that I must have fallen asleep. Nope. I did it again about 20 minutes later. I was absolutely convinced that I had missed some important plot points. The story just doesn't make any sense. It certainly doesn't bear any resemblance to the "vanishing hitchhiker" urban legend that we all associate with RM. All good horror stories have to have some sort of rules, even if the rules get broken as part of the plot. Not this movie. I truly don't understand what was going on and why things were happening. I didn't understand why certain people were killed and others weren't. I didn't even understand why the fiancée got so mad at the guy...and that took place in the first ten minutes. (And I shudder to think what would happen if my wife or GF decided to get mad at me about thoughts in my head that I had never even expressed.) Not recommended.

Almost forgot. With all due respect to the current "most helpful" reviewer, there is no way that he/she could really mean what was written. Don't believe me? Watch the film, read the review again, and then let me know what YOU think.

BTW, there are at least four different "Resurrection Mary" movies that have been released in the last ten years. Do not confuse them! None of them are good, but the one with Sally Kirkland is better than this one. Remember, go for Kirkland, not Estevez. I don't know about the other two.

You're welcome.

Resurrection Mary

[a_baron · 3/10 · 18 November 2016]

Resurrection Mary is a real ghost - as far as any ghost is real. Ritchie Blackmore and Candice Night wrote a song about her the year after this film was released, so unfortunately, "I Guess It Doesn't Matter Anymore" is not included on the soundtrack. All the same, the music wants for nothing, but when you've said that, you've said it all.

Films about the supernatural are often confusing: flashbacks, dream sequences and so on, but this one is ultra-confusing. Our hero encounters Mary at a party, and she wants his fiancée, but when the car crashes, things don't turn out the way they should. This is also one feisty spirit who packs a hell of a punch. There is a resolution, but if you want something less challenging, buy a Rubik cube.

Bottom-dweller David Lynch-wannabe co-starring Martin Sheen's brother...

[moonspinner55 · 1/10 · 31 March 2009]

While at a wedding reception for another couple, a self-doubting groom-to-be spies a platinum blonde in a white satin dress giving him the eye; intrigued, he follows her into the ladies room, but she vanishes. Later, out on the road with his fiancée, the young man apparently hits the girl with his car, only to learn that she's a ghost--the legendary jilted tramp from years gone by who perished with a doomed soul! What might have passed muster as a short-subject from a student filmmaker is elongated here to an excruciating length, filled with amateur performances, crass dialogue, flashy editing which serves no purpose except to confuse, T&A interludes, and bright red blood. Star Jason Ryan Lovett has the granite jaw and solemn manner of a misunderstood hero from a 1960s B-flick, but he isn't given the proper material to showcase a personality. Low-budget film isn't ghastly, though it shows no imagination, no style. Hopefully for Lovett, better projects are lying in wait. NO STARS from ****

Yawn

[umritter · 1/10 · 24 May 2014]

If it wasn't for my mother (Irmgard,Ritter, not Ingrid) having a small part in this movie as Sophie's aunt, I would have easily passed over this movie. I saw it on its premier night at the Pickwick Theater in Park Ridge, Illinois. The editing was poor with loud music over-powering the actors, couldn't understand what was being said, it was like being at a concert where you hear music and see lips moving but nothing coming out. The movie had lots of dead spots as if the actors were trying to remember their lines. The movie was difficult to follow, bouncing all over the place. I wouldn't waste my time with this movie unless you want to use it for background noise.

Resurrection boring

[nightroses · 1/10 · 17 August 2020]

I watched only some of the film and gave up. Too much annoying flashbacks, and clips of whats going on the characters head. The main character is miserable from the very beginning. I don't know what Mary the strange woman in white saw in him. It seems she's surrounded by maggots and flies. There is an actual legend about a ghost called Resurrection Mary but this film is bad, and an excuse to make a silly soap opera with grumpy faces. I've seen more exciting docudramas than this. None of the characters appear to like each other, and the acting is wooden. I've seen better actors doing pantomimes than this.

Best of the fest.

[goodlucharm · 7/10 · 20 July 2006]

I saw "Resurrection Mary" at The Chicago Horror Film Fest. It was the best feature of the weekend. It reminded me of the kind of show that Alfred Hitchcook use to make. The movie began with a short sparse wedding scene wherein the main characters were introduced. Soon thereafter the story got going and kept me spellbound until the end.

The movie is based on the legend of the ghost that haunts Resurrection Cemetery and Archer Av. in Chicago. As the legend goes, a beautiful young girl,engaged to be married, becomes involved in a dalliance at a dance hall with someone other than her fiancée.When this suitor is done with her, he leaves her in the way that all men leave women who give up their love too easily, ashamed and heartbroken. She is killed on her way home that night by a hit and run driver. By dying before making amends for her transgression, Mary becomes an agent for the devil, reborn with a new purpose. She appears at certain places finding and ferrying souls to the devil, souls who like her's, "have sin still clinging to them."

Decades later Shawn, an emotionally conflicted young man, encounters Mary at the same dance hall where years earlier Mary's lapse in judgement condemned her to a perpetual partnering with the devil. In a torrid public bathroom scene, an engaged Shawn, the male lead in the movie, acting on lustful impulse,instigates a replay of the passionate embrace of years earlier,this time with an ironic twist.It's Shawn who betrays his betrothal and is left to pay Mary the price of this "one night stand". Shawn discovers through Mary that guilt,denial and regret are the wages of sin.

This movie explores issues of sin and it's physical and emotional consequence as well as moral restitution and redemption. It occurred to me that the moral of "Resurrection Mary" is delineated concisely in a 5 word dialogue between the main characters at the end of the movie. They are the 5 words, when uttered by the truly contrite, have the power to absolve the soul of sin and guilt and set a spirit free.

The movie is worth a look whenever it is released.

And then along comes Mary

[sol1218 · 6/10 · 22 March 2009]

***SPOILERS*** First shown on a segment of the Robert Stack narrated crime/mystery show aptly titled "Unsolved Mysteries" back in the 1980's the story of "Resurrection Mary" has been the subject with the exact same title, making it difficult to know which is which, of four different films over the last five-from 2002 to 2007-years.

The story is based on this young girl named Mary who was taken advantage of by her drunken boyfriend at the O'henry Ballroom in Chicago back in the mi-1930's. Leaving the ballroom in sub-freezing weather only wearing her white party dress Mary was run down and killed by a motorist who didn't stop to help or call for assistance. It's been said that Mary has been haunting that strip of highway-Archer Av-in Chicago and outside where she's entombed-the Chicago Resurrection Cemetery- ever since.

In the film Shawn, Jason Ryan Lovett, is at a party where he comes in contact with this mysterious young blond woman, Eva Bloomfield, whom he falls heads over heels for. Being engaged to Amy, Rebbecca Shea, Shawn has second thoughts about marrying her and his outrageous rendezvous, in the ladies room of all places, with the blond woman just about destroys his engagement with her.

It's when Shawn is driving Amy home that the woman of his dreams, the mysterious blond at the party, becomes his worst nightmare! Shawn ends of picking her up hitch-hiking on Archer Av outside, you guessed it, the Resurrection Cemetery! As it turned out the young woman was non-other then the fabled Resurrection Mary! Feeling very strange, and even scared, with the woman in the back seat of the car Shawn drops her off right outside the Resurrection Cemetery where he just picked her up. This later leads Shawn to have his car skid off the road in turning the car around, at Amy's insistence, to pick up the stranded Mary and cause Amy-who suffered a massive brain concussion- to end up in the local hospital on life support. During the remainder of the film Shawn is haunted with the guilt of having cheated on his fiancée Amy and at the same time having Mary, who knew how Amy felt in what happened to her when she was alive, make him pay for his infidelities.

****SPOILER ALERT****Mary doesn't just stop in driving poor Shawn insane and almost suicidal but also has it in for, and does in, the ballroom, where the party was thrown, manager Wilkes, Joe Esteves. Wilkes ends up getting it, in the throat, for both knowing and talking too much, about who Mary is and what's she done over the years. Mary's other victim is Wilkes' waitress/cashier Sophie, Elezabeth Bagby, who's driven insane and ends up hanging herself for trying to warn Shawn what he's, in Mary's diabolical plans for him, in for in the future!

Not that satisfying of an ending with Shawn being put through the ringer and on the brink of death only to come back to life, like his fiancée Amy, at the very last moment. All that noble and heroic efforts on Shawn's part turned out to be in vein with Resurrection Mary coming back to life,like she's done over the last 70 or so years, to both haunt and drive insane other young men like Shawn who end up falling, at the expense of their wives girlfriends and fiancées', for her.