MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB (2023)

Available On Demand from Uncork’d Entertainment!
Directed by Jason Arber.
Written by Harry Boxley.
Starring May Kelly, Christine Ann Nyland, Gaston Alexander, Mark Sears, Harry Boxley, Gillian Broderick, Danielle Scott, Charlie Esquér, Lisa Lasso, Rob Kirtley, Elliott Eason, Rina Cheung

In a last ditch effort to save her true crime podcast, Carla (May Kelly) and her daring group of online investigators, try to be proactive and look into a series of disappearances in a wooded area outside of London. Turns out in the middle of this forest is a strange woman named Mary (Christine Anne Nyland) and her mute man-mountain of a son named Lamb (played by Gaston Alexander). Once Carla and the crew find the house, Mary offers for them to stay the night, making them easy pickin’s for Lamb to axe them up into little pieces.

Of the two nursery rhymes I have seen in the last few days; I preferred THREE BLIND MICE to the one note TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE rip-off that is MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB. While much of the cast is the same, the story is extremely lacking. While the motivation had a more personal feel in THREE BLIND MICE with the attention paid towards an intervention within a family, this one is simply about a headstrong investigator who doesn’t care that she is diving headfirst into danger no matter how many red flags are waving.

Now, I don’t mind a good TCM knockoff. As long as there’s a skosh of originality or even a few decent moments of homage to the classic. In MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB, they don’t even try. For no reason at all, Lamb wears a lamb-head mask and drools in the attic, waiting for his mother, Mary to let him loose. Once unshackled, he simply picks up people and drags them around or whacks them with an axe. Not even the kills are original.

I will say it was lovely seeing May Kelly again, but she has less to work with here than she does with THREE BLIND MICE. I also think Christine Anne Nyland does a great job of playing the looney old Mary. The rest of MARY HAD A LITTLE LAMB is nothing you haven’t seen before in TCM and all of its knockoffs.

Check out the trailer here!!