Over Analyze This

Rating: 7/10 (24 April 2016)

Without Alfred Hitchcock around, thrillers like this one are few and far between. This movie will not age well, because since 2001 rotary telephones and regular phones are gone, replaced by cell phones. This move predates home computers it seems. Therefore, even though the film is past 2000, it must be set in a time prior to 2000.
To me, the entire film is a dream. There are way too many things which can not be reality. We have Betty (Naomi Watts) moving into her Aunts apartment and finding Rita/Camilla (Laura Harring) naked in her shower without the water running. Betty then gets word that Rita (name based on a Gilda poster (film starring Rita Hayworth) does not belong there. This is the biggest hole in this plot, as any normal person would call the police at this point. Instead, Betty decides to tell her this but decides she wants to learn more about Rita who is nearly naked and hurting.
Things that get lost in the shuffle include the car accident that Rita got hurt in and her serious wounds which mysteriously vanish without any real medical care. From here the suspense builds as scene after scene are not predictable and sometimes do not make any sense. In the last half of the film, Betty starts reliving the same scenes she lived in the first half but with slight changes.
The mystery theater which appears in the second half of the film and the casting call by the cowboy create a strange sort of suspense. As the rotations happened during the last half of the film, you have to be able to remember the first half sequences and note the subtle changes in the latter sequences. That is the only way this movie makes any sense.
This is the kind of movie that makes you think, but is it the perfect film? Hardly, though it does make you think how dreams can alter reality which is the purpose of all the twists and turns. This is a film that you note things and then in the end note how things change as the dream changes. The cast carries this off well and in the case of David Lynch, this is by far his best film.