Monday, September 19, 2005

Secret Window

A film like The Sixth Sense with a big secret to keep. But V twigged almost from the start, thereby blowing it for me! I can't honestly claim that I would have guessed at the same time anyway, but Director David Koepp doesn't go to any great lengths to protect his secret either.

In movie terms François Ozon's Swimming Pool and Ira Levin's Deathtrap have been the most memorable precedents within the writer-protagonist thriller genre for me. (Stephen King also gave us Misery, but Paul Sheldon's role is passive.) Secret Window is not sure whether it wants to be fully postmodern like a Paul Auster novel, where the relationships between the author and his violent stories are determinedly piggledy-higgledy, or whether it is just a 'simple' tale of psychosis. As ever Johnny Depp makes his role (divorcee thriller-writer Mort Rainey) interesting to watch, and the mood of eccentricity is shared by some of the supporting characters, but maybe worries about the spirit of the last act prevented Koepp from making Mort's wife Aimey and her lover Ted more complete individuals.

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