There's Misdirection-- and then there's Lies

Rating: 1/10 (5 August 2004)

There are certain facts that cannot be overlooked when critiquing this film. One is that the director is known for surprise endings. His last two films were great to the very end, and had a payoff that wrapped up the whole movie in a nice little package.
Another is that the director has set himself up by his previous films as a neo-Hitchcock with his plot twists and turns-- misdirections used as a great magician making a card appear from thin air. There is no doubt that this is what he is trying to accomplish, as he even has cameos in his films in true Hitchcock fashion.
But one thing Hitchcock never did was lie to the audience. If you were ever wrapped up in the main character, as is common in good movies, and began to see things through the eyes of the characters, that was your own doing. This film goes beyond that unwritten law of misdirection and sets up scenes and images that are there for no other reason than to support a supposed premise to the point where you must believe. It is no longer the character in the movie who is misled, but you in the audience. There is no slight of hand... just lies.(One such example, without giving the movie away, is an aerial shot of a blind girl standing in a field of berries of "the bad color." She is blind and gets nothing from this. It is purely to lie to the audience.)
But this is to be expected. The premise of this film is so weak and flimsy, that without a bold-faced lie, you wouldn't sit through the whole movie.