Did Alfred Hitchcock Return from the Dead to Direct an "X-Files" Episode?

Rating: Null/10 (19 October 2002)

There are certain comments about this movie that just can't be made except to have the effect of Spoilers, so I'll save those for the end & they'll be well-marked. The legendary Hitchcock had a device he called a "MacGuffin," basically the thing that kept the plot moving. Here the MacGuffin is the mysterious videotape cassette that we already knew about from the trailer. At the outset we see a couple of teenagers (they seem to be having a "slumber party," except it's just the two of them) discussing the "killer tape" & of course we know something bad is going to happen to at least one of them. (The ensuing sequence reminded me of the beginning of "Scream" without the dark humor.) Then our heroine stumbles across the tape by picking it apparently randomly from among a bunch of them at a Norman Bates-type motel in the woods. (It's the only tape that isn't labeled, maybe that drew her attention to it.) Then she watches the tape, & so do we the audience.
Ordinarily I try to avoid second-guessing a director as I do a baseball manager, but in this case I think we shouldn't have been allowed to see the tape that early. (For a description of the tape's contents, see the Spoiler section.) In fact I wouldn't have let us see it until near the end. That way when Rachel, the heroine, kept seeing images resembling those on the tape, we would've had to guess as to their significance (e.g. maybe she's losing it). Instead, though, Rachel has to dash hither & yon like Agent Scully trying to filter an objective reality (albeit a strange one) through a prism based on her common-sense, skeptical background. Early on Rachel seems a level-headed & even saucy investigative reporter, so it's to Naomi Watts' geat credit as an actress that she gets us to buy her transition to yet another terror-stricken scream-queen. But given how many times we get to see the tape or parts of it, the effect seems somewhat worn by the end.
Okay, was this movie scary or not? Well, ten different people could give ten different answers. A lot of it was very creepy in the best "X-Files" sense, enhanced by the Hitchcockian flair for suspense. A few real kick-ass jolts (see under Spoilers). But all told, those who found this genuinely disconcerting may not have seen as many movies as some others, because (as has been pointed out by others) almost everything in this movie has been done before, some of it pretty recently, i.e. "Feardotcom." (I'm not even taking into account this is a remake of a Japanese flick; I'm guessing most Americans haven't seen the original; I for one haven't.)
HERE'S THE PART WITH THE SPOILERS
The contents of the killer videotape reminded me somewhat of Luis Bunuel's "An Andalusian Dog" fom 1928 on which he collaborated with the Surrealist painter Dali. It's a series of apparently unrelated images, most of which can be connected to the short unhappy life of the spooky little girl who was murdered by her mother who later killed herself, but certain images, such as the box of fingers, seem to be there only for their own surrealist sake (Bunuel's movie had a shot of someone poking at a severed hand with a cane). The "extended" version we see at the end is great, beginning with the shot of the well with the hand protruding from it ending with the ghost-girl actually emerging from the TV screen into the living room, that kicked ass, A+ for that. It was so effective it made me forget the umpteen questions I had been accumulating along the way, which by the way remain unanswered, but someone wrote there's supposed to be a sequel in the works, but I think every movie has to stand alone to be judged more or less. The scene with Watts after she'd plunged into the well also made an impression, chiefly that huge stone slab sliding into place by itself.
But to be brutally frank: I'm pretty tired by now of movies with the premise of a dead person trying to communicate with the living. Over a decade ago we had "Ghost" with Whoopi Goldberg which spelled it out for us: if the ghost really concentrates, he or she can get his or her point across, even to the point of using a PC keyboard. I mean, gee whiz, back in the 19th century Marley's ghost actually took the trouble to appear in front of Scrooge rattling the chains & all that, so have ghosts regressed since then or something? In "Beetlejuice" they just showed up: "Hey, here we are." Now, it seems, ghosts have to bend over backward manifesting themselves. Well, if a ghost can push nails up out of floors or knock things over or other physical stuff, why can't the ghost just levitate a ballpoint pen onto a piece of paper & make some damn words, like MY BODY CAN BE FOUND AT SUCH & SUCH LOCATION, TAKE THE BUS...
By the way, I disagree with those who have slagged the little boy in the movie, I thought he was great. Very calm & collected, not a whiny little jerk like the kid in "The Sixth Sense" & others, called his mother "Rachel" instead of "Mom." But I'll admit when he told her "You weren't supposed to help her," I thought "Well okay, NOW you tell us....."

Didn't much care for the dead-horse motif. Leave the animals alone, y'all....