Yeh either I’m a glutton for punishment or I just adore Dakota Fanning :-p You know which it is lol. This movie truly is bad, worse than the first time. Dakota and DeNiro are both amazing, though – Dakota moreso, but I like certain aspects of DeNiro’s performance, those times when he’s not looking constipated (which he does for 95% of the movie’s duration). I particularly like the scene when Emily first tells her daddy about Charlie – I like how you can see all the emotions playing across DeNiro’s face, like, is she making this up? Did she meet a weirdo in town? But at the same time, he’s trying not to let the fear and worry show ‘cos he doesn’t want to frighten his daughter.

Maybe the problem is that I’ve seen The Shining. This movie makes clear visual reference to that movie in its opening credits sequence of father and daughter driving to seclusion in the mountains and if you’ve seen it, I think the whole “secret” of this movie becomes all too obvious all too soon and the movie becomes a joke. That, or the joke is intentional. I’ll have to listen to the commentaries. I kind of hope the joke is intentional. I’d love to feel comfortable laughing my ass off while watching this movie. Like, the bearded guy with the housekey, for example. Could he be anymore creepy? And what’s his purpose in the movie? Oh – just to be creepy, lol.

I don’t even know what star rating to give the movie. On the one hand, I’m keeping it in my DVD collection and I’ll watch it many times in the future (at least 4 ‘cos of the other endings – one of which may be good?) When Dakota’s onscreen, there’s no such thing as a bad movie. On the other hand, this movie has the worst screenplay imaginable – I mean, Famke Janssen at the end, brandishing the gun and saying, “Hide and seek!” before firing, lol – WTF is that about? It’s like something from a Simpsons Rainier Wolfcastle type parody, lol. I don’t know, whatever. This movie defies criticism, I guess.

8th March 2005:

In short, this movie begins all right, then becomes unintentionally hilarious, and finally for what feels like the last two hours, surreally excruciating.

I’m sure it’s not as bad as other reviewers have said – Dakota Fanning at least saves it from crap movie hell. The concept, kind of The Shining meets The Sixth Sense, is pretty good, and until “the twist” is revealed, the movie chugs along like any textbook thriller, gripping, intriguing, fun. But “the twist” is so damn stupid and obvious by comparison, and it’s revealed too early (well, too early if the twist had actually been unpredictable), that everything that follows it is really, truly, excruciating. You just want the movie to end.

Let’s take a moment to thank god for Dakota Fanning, though. Maybe we could clone her to make all bad movies a little better, so the real Dakota can make good ones like I Am Sam and Man on Fire?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 10th, 2005 at 10:59 pm in 3 hearts, Movie Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.