Mercy: The Story of the Artist
Directed by Victor Cooper
Written by Jodi & Victor Cooper
Starring: Kirsten Wight
Reviewed by Jess Landry
Solum City is a pretty gloomy town. A good chunk of the depressed residents frequent a local suicide website where they freely state their dreary intentions for the world to read – plain and simple, they want to die. Well, whether these people mean it or not (maybe it’s just a bad case of seasonal deficiency), they get what they ask for. Artist and mentally unstable person Mercy Noble happens to be a regular user of the site, and there is nothing that Mercy loves more than a good kill.
When we first catch up with Mercy, she’s already dead. From her current resting place on the metal slab of a morgue, she recounts the tales of the lost souls she helped put out of their misery – from a neglected teen with inappropriately kinky parents to a people-pleaser with rock hard abs, when the call for help is made, Mercy responds. And she makes sure to leave a calling card behind at every crime scene: foreshadowing images drawn on the walls made from the blood of her victims. Hey, they don’t call her “the Artist” for nothing.
Like any good film about murdering and such, there’s a nice helping of blood and guts (the filmmakers certainly got their money’s worth from the axe wound prosthetic). But it’s all good – the gore is not the focus here. This short film transcends from a story about a crazy person in a sad, little town to a story about art, salvation and humanity. Given that the first fifteen minutes of the twenty minute film are spent watching Mercy do her thing, the last five minutes or so pull everything together into one final thought-provoking scene. And the twenty minute runtime works perfectly for the pace of the film – any longer and it could’ve very well flared off into the realm of the monotonous.
The standout performance is star Kirsten Wight’s monotone delivery of Mercy Noble. Her stone cold expression and voice match the depression swarming Solum City, only showing signs of emotion through her art. She detaches herself from her victims until one pushes her to confront her own humanity, leading to that aforementioned final scene.
Strong lady characters are hard to come by in the genre and they usually fall into the victim or victim-turned-badass category. Here, Mercy is neither. She’s the threat; the hunter. It’s refreshing to see a female serial killer, especially one that isn’t one-dimensional. It’s clear she’s dangerous but she’s also already dead, so waiting to see the chink in her armour that led to her downfall only adds to her humanity.
Kudos to the filmmakers, Jodi and Victor Cooper, for contributing to the Canadian horror scene. The 70s and 80s were an important time for slasher films and Canada contributed with classics like Black Christmas, Prom Night and My Blood Valentine. Since then, it’s been a little quiet on the Northern front, but it’s movies like this (regardless of length) that show that our country hasn’t crawled under the deck to die just yet.
Mercy is hitting the festival circuit as we speak. If you find it playing near you, take twenty minutes out of your day and go watch something special.
