Awesome for a newbie. Awful for a pro.

Rating: 6/10 (19 September 2004)

I saw a free screener copy of this film after having seen the trailers. What I got from the trailers is that this film was going to break new ground in suspense and shock-value.
It didn't. It's no more suspenseful than "Psycho" (1960), and less shocking than Wes Craven's "The Last House on the Left".
What worked for this film enough to get it sold was the original concept. It breaks the typical barriers of they cliché' serial killer genre. In this case, the villain doesn't kill. He forces people to kill other people or themselves. There is a reason the killer does this, and it will actually make sense to the audience. He's not just simply crazy. That would be bad "cop-out" writing, otherwise. The directors are not afraid to show disturbing images, and knows when to cut away from them before it becomes cheaply gratuitous. The mystery unravels itself cleverly, keeping the audience guessing at what's going on, and just when the audience is sure the mystery has been solved, it turns out there's more to learn.
However, this is a new young director and it shows. It shows terribly. The editing is paced far far too slow. There's probably 5 minutes of film that could be cut out, where the audience is not gaining any new knowledge, and there's no anticipation for anything. For instance, there's a scene where one character asks his partner to come over and look at something. It takes the guy a good 10 seconds to get over and have the audience look at it. I was tired of waiting by 7 seconds. Gotta shorten this stuff, guys.
Also, we see a car chase (or race) in which everything is in fast-forward, MTV style. Why? It's distracting from the story, and it looks laughably silly. There's other parts of the movie that do this fast-forward technique, as well as a circular track around that does nothing logical for the audience's intake of information. It's just silly, and obviously done for style, and the style is NOT subtle enough to get by without the audience questioning the director's decisions. A good director is taken for granted while people watch the film, and are appreciated after the film is over.
Ever notice in some films that an actor who is usually great is suddenly a bad actor? That's when a film has a bad director. Well, a bad director as far as directing actors or finalizing the editing ADR dialogue. This film manages to make Danny Glover suck. The dialogue is at times trying too hard to be colorful and creative. It tries so hard that the audience can hear the writer in an imaginary flashback, talking to himself about how to make the dialogue more fresh. A true master can keep it colorful, yet natural and logical.
6/10 Good in originality. Poor in technicality.