Lots of nice aspects, but ultimately disappointing

Rating: 4/10 (2 April 2005)

This movie belongs to a personal sub-genre of movies called, "everything but a story".
Movies like this ultimately make me mad. Why? The cast is good. The acting is better than good, there's some great character work here. There are beautiful moments, dialog that is alternately interesting, funny, scary. The music is good and enhances the visuals.
But, with a movie like this, one that depends for its dramatic tension on a countdown to a tragic event punctuated by increasingly strange psychic events, when the countdown gets to zero, the film story had better make sense. I'm not saying it can't be ambiguous. I'm saying that the plot at the end has to make sense in relation to what came earlier.
This movie utterly fails to do this. There's an old "Far Side" cartoon where a scientist has filled up his blackboard with calculations. Then, just before the result, he has drawn a cloud surrounding the words, "...and then a miracle occurs". That's what this movie does. The writer has simply plotted himself into a corner, can't get out of it, and so depends on vague edits and moody music to finish the movie without bothering to really have a finished story.
I ultimately come away from movies like this feeling that the writer and/or director has wasted my time, and the time of all the talented people who took part, because he/they just didn't work the story enough. So I end up disappointed and angry. It's a shame. This was nearly, very nearly, an excellent movie.