Congratulations, American Mary - you win worst of the month by far. This isn't a film so much as it is an infomercial for a subculture of which the Soska sisters are fond. The most inept characterization ever - at first I thought this film might just be very arch, but around the halfway point I had to concede that it's just that the Soskas have no idea how to write even broad caricatures. It's a complete narrative mess - it wants to be a revenge thriller but completely drops that thread, which it had been building towards for almost half of the runtime, in favor of a series of vignettes about the titular character's rise in the body modification world. But then it decides to return to the revenge well later for some reason, and throws in a rushed, forced climax that they haven't put in the requisite legwork for. This film is a feminist manifesto? Bullshit - it's every bit as exploitative and trashy (not that that's a bad thing in and of itself) as Last House on the Left. The sisters' direction is as blunt and unsubtle as they come, the acting is across-the-board atrocious, and the grand guignol gore setpieces pull their punches. The American film Excision - released the same year - mines very similar territory to much better effect. A complex protagonist, sharp direction, a full narrative arc filled with building tension, a wicked sense of humor, and an unflinching eye where it counts. I'd say American Mary might have a marginal purpose as background noise in a tattoo/piercing parlor, but any owner of such an establishment would probably be better off just showing this documentary: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455980/. I've not seen it, yet I feel comfortable making that statement.
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