Okay, let's start this one off quickly. This film has Julianne Moore and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers in it, and it's a psychological horror. A refreshing change after our usual fill of gore movies for the year, I was recommended this by one of my girlfriend's workmates, which has drawn me to two conclusions.
1. Horror films really aren't getting any better.
and
2. Trust nobody.
It entails a psychologist called Cara Harding (Julianne Moore) who is brought into a medical establishment by her father, also a psychologist, to look at a strange young man, apparently with multiple personality disorder, called Adam (Rhys-Meyers) and to explain his more than slightly abnormal case. It seems he has a personality called David, a man who has been dead for a long time. Soon, with investigation, Dr. Harding discovers this man's psychosis has a supernatural edge. Naturally, it starts affecting her and her family. The film is a twisty-turny affair, with plenty of overacting and dubiously explained plot points, and to be honest, this is the best thing that can be said about it. The film is bad. Pure and simple.
Now witness the unbelievable versatility of Jonathan Rhys Meyers.The film is utterly convinced it is scary. Honestly put, it's boring. There are some huge problems with the script and they largely revolve around the fact that writer Jack Cooney seems to at random points drastically change the nature of what the script is about. Simply put, it just all feels a bit made up as you go along. The initial scenes of Cara confronting Adam over his unusual personality problem are interesting, if a little drawn out, but the film quickly falls into ludicrous territory. Let's start with the most obvious plot problems here:
1. Why is Cara investigating Adam's case so intensively? What the hell does she do? Apparently she's a psychologist of some kind, but other than her dad calling her up at the beginning and basically saying 'hey, check this dude out!', she has no reason to be doing what she's doing at all. She makes regular cross-country trips, sometimes with Adam and wheelchairs and so forth. I don't get it. Who's paying for this? Is she freelancing for somebody? Is she just doing it for her dad's amusement? She has no motivation whatsoever and it's never explained why she simply doesn't just drop the damned case when it starts getting dangerous. Also, aren't there legal implications when psychologists just randomly tear-ass across the countryside to hunt down deceased children's parents and interrogate them about their child's gruesome death?
2. Why why why is Adam constantly free? Yes, the main antagonist of the entire film, who clearly has a huge and frankly fucking scary psychological problem that is defying doctors and is clearly linked in some way to all the grisly murders in the film, and yet, not only is he never under constant observation, he seems to be just...out and about. All the time. This guy who is clearly totally dangerous to everyone around him just seems to be going around, and just drops in on most of the film's characters. Why? Nobody is ever watching over him or wondering if he should be in prison, he just goes around, does what he wants, and turns up for interviews with his psychologist periodically. I'm sorry, but, sanity check - A man who is a proven medical danger and clearly a fucking killer is wandering around free and NOBODY EVEN STOPS TO ASK WHY! My god, this film is stupid!
3. *SPOILERS* How does Adam's 'curse' actually work? The film takes pleasure in explaining the thrust of it to us, and how its origins came about, and how it's transferred. But...why is it transferred? Didn't the guy die? How did he come back? It's all very clumsily explained. They just sort of assume we know. But here's the thing guys, your audience may not be stupid, but they are not psychic either. This is one of those films where a revelation like this has to be explained, or in the context of the rest of the film, it makes not the blindest lick of sense. So as a result, the 'big reveal' is nothing of the kind, even if I did kind of like some of the invented mythology of it. It's pretty lazy storytelling, honestly.
'Hi, is that my agent? Yeah, tell him I want to fire him.'Back to the review:
As I have sort of explained, the plot is the main problem here. The biggest plot-holes I have explained, but the film's structure is very flaky too. It resorts to just dropping stories and characters whenever it seems dramatically convenient to do so. One character, who is bigged up as one of the most important characters in the plot, ultimately plays absolutely no role in the proceedings because they simply disappear. They make their final appearance during a scene which accomplishes nothing, and they are never seen again. Again, with randomly killing off characters who have no reason to die, other than that the writer needed to dispense with the character so they were not in a later scene. One final plot horror: Cara's brother Stephen (Nathan Corddry) is a musician, and at one stage makes a quite unbelievable leap of logic which resolves in him solving one of the major plot points of the film. It is a stab in the dark so random, so deus ex machina that I wanted to beat myself over the head with a glass bottle in sheer frustration.
Jonathan Rhys-Meyers' acting could be charitably described as painfully eye-rollingly ear-bleedingly bad. He has two acting styles, which are to glower, and then shudder and weep. Oh, and he can do accents too. Just count 'em! We also get a really subtle reminder that he is switching personalities when his head twists back exorcist style and he gasps slightly dramatically. Feel the terror. Most inanimate objects give more convincing performances than Jonathan Rhys-Meyers does in this film. As for Julianne Moore...come on, you're better than this! You're a really good actress! Even she however just stumbles through the film looking confused. Personally, I don't blame her. Let's just cover the visual base by saying that the film is unbelievably dark most of the time, but there's nothing wrong with the way the film is shot. Editing maybe, but not the shooting.
Oh, I could just go on and on. It's a really bad horror film. Very ill conceived and beyond muddled. It reminded me of another film called Identity, from 2003, again about split personalities. I remember that one was confused and a bit stupid too...oh, its the same writer.
Well, I'll be buggered.
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