betraying your audience and calling it a 'twist'

Rating: Null/10 (28 April 2003)

I'm stunned that so many people seem to like this movie. I am also appalled that so many people seem to think that this is some sort of serious psychological enquiry--though there is some enjoyment to be had in how arrogant many of them are to naysayers about the penetrating psychological examination they think this film is. Clue phone people: this film relates to true, realistic mental illness as paper clips relate to asteroids. Okay?
SPOILERS---->Want to know the big twist of this movie without actually having to see it? (you'll just have to send me your $7!) All of the characters don't really exist, they're just the multiple personalities of this guy who appears in certain (VERY few) scenes, and as they're all 'killed off,' he's HEALING!!! Great, but then why should anyone care about what happens to these people if they don't actually exist? Why should anyone see this movie... etc. Then there's a last little bit at the end, equally ludicrous, but by then a Pterodactyls could demolish the town and you wouldn't care. <-----SPOILERS END
The satisfaction of a twist, when it works, is precisely THAT IT MAKES SENSE. This is a twist for the sake of a twist, and it made me turn against the movie, and rather hate everyone involved in making it. I was surprised that this was #1 opening weekend, and I'll be interested to see if it keeps doing decent business, or if people hear to avoid it. If you ask me, avoid it. You can find out what the twist is in the paragraph above, and that's the only interest to be had here.
Anyway, the movie was a decent slasher film until a bit before the twist, when many seams in logic are starting to show. John Cusack is VERY good. Amanda Peet was also very good, which is nice to see cause I like her, but all I've ever seen her do is be a--ahem--"unpleasant woman" who bosses men around, though in one variation she gets to OD on heroin. Clea Duvall--boy, she sure can cry. Liotta is good, though is role is so rote it doesn't matter much.
An example of where a twist like this has actually WORKED is in the small English movie PAPERHOUSE. But I think the crucial element is that it isn't set up as the huge surprise, you know it from the beginning (and hence don't feel betrayed). In it, a young girl draws a picture of a house. Then she falls asleep, and GOES to the house. It is exactly as she draws it--meaning that when she draws a boy in the window, his legs hidden behind the wall, that when she meets him he doesn't have the use of his legs. It gets scary, because the girl is sick and has fainting spells, having no control over when she gets sucked into her dangerous dream world.
Anyway, if you ask me, stay away, but other people seem to like it, so...
--- Check out website devoted to bad and cheesy movies: www.cinemademerde.com