Mailer Tuchman Media
There’s a sort of romance and mystery to the concept of the ‘multiple personality disorder’, which was Hollywood-ized countless times as a way to do the concept of someone who seems normal who has a more interesting, often darker side. Of course, the official name changed to ‘dissociative identity disorder’ in the 90s and recharacterized much of the symptoms, but one factor remained the same: It most often came from someone who experienced trauma.
DieRy plays with this idea in a few ways, many absurd on their face, but some partially at the very least based in the traumatic reality. The movie comes from director Jennifer Gelfer and writer John Buffalo Mailer, and it’s really sort of several movies at the same time. Our protagonist is Marie Clark (Claudia Maree Mailer), a model with millions of followers on Instagram and also a TA for a professor while getting her masters in comparative religion.
Her professor Harris (Thomas Q Jones) is a charismatic, intelligent force, and the two bond over their nerdy love of ancient religious folklore. I liked a lot of those exchanges, being one such fan myself, but I was really hoping it would tie into the general film narrative in some way. Instead, it’s just a bit of generic color for Marie, not really tied into anything else so it feels like a bit of a waste of potential.
We discover that Marie has had a traumatic, abusive past but is getting support and regular therapy from her psychiatrist Dr. Brighton (James Sutorius). Marie has a few friends, although they are mainly set dressing, and she has a few increasingly uncomfortable situations with a creepy photographer who doesn’t seem to understand the concept of professional boundaries.
Peppered through the start of the movie are a few flashes of some mental facility where a young girl with severe problems seems to be going through a lot — it’s all tied together eventually, but the idea is of course to be very mysterious and confusing. The drama of the movie starts when Marie discovers that her diary has been stolen and gets a very stalker-y love letter that threatens people that might be a danger to her. Naturally that sort of thing is relative.
Marie asks for help from her professor, who brings in an Irish private investigator and friend of his (Ciaran Byrne), which feels … odd. Marie has a bit of an accent, the twangy blend of British and New Zealand of the actress herself, but everyone else is simply an American, so tossing in a random Irish detective feels sort of surreal.
Eventually all the mysteries are tied together and explained, going to very weird and bizarre places — some of which are legitimately a bit insulting to people with DID in the real world. The story feels like it’s half there, with the mystery going so off the rails in the third act that it feels like a different movie entirely.
That said, Claudia Maree Mailer is a fantastic lead, pulling off a lot of difficult emotional back and forth jumps, and she has a very captivating, charismatic presence. Despite the clichéd nature of much of the plot, it can be fairly compelling despite that, and pretty watchable. There’s an element of the ending that is, despite being ridiculous, still fairly satisfying.
It’s interesting to combine those sorts of feelings, but it’s sort of like a ‘mostly recommend’, just be aware of what you’re getting into — only Marie has any personality in the movie, but for the most part, you can just let that go.
DieRy has a run time of 1 hour 40 minutes and is not rated.
Mailer Tuchman Media
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