Look

Plot synopsis:
The film follows several intertwining narratives as the security cameras watch over the characters in several different areas: a gas station, a high school, a mall and an office building. The storylines progress over the course of one week and many of the characters end up interacting with each other in the course of their lives.Tony, a manager at a housewares store at a local Los Angeles shopping mall, openly flirts and touches several of his female co-workers. He is seen having sex with one woman, Lydia, in the warehouse space of the store. A day later, Lydia eventually hears from one co-worker, Naomi, that Tony has had sex with her as well. When confronted, Tony tries to twist the conversation around, citing that Lydia's married with three kids, and eventually reconciles with her through more sex. Other security camera footage shows Tony having sex with multiple employees. A few days later, Tony attempts to hit on Courtney, a new employee, who flatly refuses his advances and notifies him of a previous sexual harassment lawsuit that she had to settle with her previous employer. Courtney eventually tells Lydia, and it turns out that Lydia told Courtney that Tony would try to flirt with and seduce her and advised her to threaten him with a sexual harassment suit. However, Lydia pretends that she never fell for his womanizing charms and that only idiots sleep with Tony.Marty is a nerdy office worker who seems to be born of bad luck: an ATM eats his card, he is awkward with social interaction and he ends up being the target of several mean-spirited pranks at his firm by two co-workers, ranging from spiked soft drinks and drawers filled with sour cream, to the wheels from his car in the garage being removed. Over the course of the film, Marty becomes increasingly upset by the wide range of pranks pulled on him. He complains to his supervisor about the harassment, who is completely unsympathetic and refuses to believe Marty due to his nasty and crafty co-workers covering their tracks every time. Marty eventually explodes his frustration onto the co-worker who pranks him, who remains unfazed.Ben and his wife Louise install cameras into their house to look after their baby while they are at work. Ben is a lawyer and Louise works as a loan officer at a local bank. Their six-year-old daughter Megan ends up being the target of a shadowy pedophile over the course of two days who wears a blue sloush hat to hide his face from local CCTV cameras, when she and Louise shop for clothes, housewares and toys.One day, Ben runs into George, a fellow lawyer who works in the same courthouse and shares the same gym. Unbeknownst to his wife, Ben is involved in a romantic affair with George. The two later go to a restaurant, where George tells Ben that while he is still in love with Ben, he cannot share him and happily leaves him with his wife and family. On the second day, the pedophile with the blue hat makes his move and approaches Megan in the mall food court while she is waiting for her mother to return with their meals. Louise, unable to gain assistance from the surrounding diners in locating where her child went, contacts security. The pedophile is revealed at this point to be Marty, the office worker.Meanwhile, two sociopath men are pulled over by a cop on the highway, but end up overpowering the officer, shooting him and driving his vehicle into the ditch. They later rob a woman using an the ATM at gunpoint, lock her in the trunk of her car and leave it in a mall parking lot where they seal another car. The pair then make their way to a convenience store, in which clerk Willie and his friend Carl hang out during the late night hours. The first time the pair visit passes without incidence, as Carl is covering the store for Willie who is persuaded to get back together with his girlfriend. On the second time, Willie has recognized the pair as the "Candid Camera Killers", as the cop's footage has hence been circulated on television networks. Willie then writes down their license plate number on their latest stolen car and calls the police. The pair of killers make a swift getaway as the clerks watch on a news camera, before colliding head-on with another vehicle. The police make their arrests on the seriously wounded men, one of whom dies at the scene.Sherri is an outgoing, sexually aggressive high school student who admits to her friend Holly that she has a secret crush. She eventually reveals that her crush is on Berry Krebbs, one of her teachers. Sherri attempts to flirt with Berry several times but he refuses, citing that he is married and that his wife is expecting their first child. However, he finally relents when she corners him at his car late one night on school grounds. The two have sex in the driver's seat before Berry drives off. Sherri calls Holly shortly thereafter to confirm that she and Berry had a sexual encounter, and Holly then spreads the word all over school. The next day, the police arrest Berry on sexual assault and rape charges. Sherri's true colors are finally revealed of her being a devious and manipulative sexual predator who targets various men to seduce and cry rape on them. At the police station, Sherri gives a passionate testimony, suggesting that Berry forced her into the vehicle and had unprotected sex with her, but she instantly clams up when the police mention that her school is equipped with surveillance cameras and that they have a copy of the tape. Sherri's parents sit down to watch the tape, horrified of their daughter's actions. While Sherri decides to drop the rape charges, Berry's life falls apart as his wife Joan decides to leave him and move back to Philadelphia; and Berry himself, due to the videotape evidence, is charged for statutory rape and is forced to register as a sex offender. His lawyer, Ben, advises him to plead no contest at his trial to have his sentence reduced to ten years.A minor storyline occurs when a dark-skinned man accidentally leaves his knapsack on a bus. The bus is eventually evacuated and the bomb squad is called in, revealing that the knapsack contains nothing more than college textbooks.In a montage during the epilogue:Joan Krebbs gives birth while Berry is incarcerated, and Sherri is seen being expelled from school.Willie and Carl are awarded $50,000 at a public ceremony for the information that led to the arrest of the Candid Camera Killers, while the sole surviving killer is found guilty and sentenced.Ben and Louise return home to their housekeeper without their daughter, with a sympathetic police detective in tow who tells the distraught couple that the police will keep looking for their daughter as well as the man who abducted her despite that they have very little to go on as the man's identity (Marty) has not turned up on any criminal or sex offender database.The sexual predator Tony is shown in a drive-through fast-food place.... with his wife and children, who are all clearly oblivious to the fact that Tony is a sex addict as well as his secret life of seducing other women.George, having been rejected by Ben, is seen at a local gym and scouting potential guys to pick up and have a relationship with.The darker-skinned man is seen graduating from college.The woman inside the trunk of the stolen car at the mall parking lot has stopped producing noise after several days, while people and cars (including mall security people) pass by... oblivious to the woman (clearly dead by this point) in the trunk.Marty is approached by a police officer at his office cubicle. Fearing that he is about to be arrested for the abduction of the little girl, he is instead horrified to learn that this is yet another cruel prank against him: the "officer" ends up being a male stripper, hired by his mean co-workers who laugh and hurl homophobic insults at him (all of them continuing to be oblivious to the fact that Marty is a pedophile madman who will continue to go out to abduct little girls after work hours). The image zooms back to show dozens and hundreds of security camera frames in the screen as it turns off and the end credits roll..

Tags: murder, prank

Review:
Very well executed.The lack of traditional camera-work and the ugliness that inherently comes with this "security cam" type footage was a big issue for me before I even started watching it, but once into it I forgot it entirely.
The great thing about it is that not only is it fun and enthralling, but it gets your thinking about the whole concept of voyeurism and how often we're being watched.
By the end of the movie the paths of most of these often unrelated characters have crossed in the 3 main locations- a mall, a school, and a convenience store.---After reading the other reviews I was still very much in the dark about this movie.
However it was the passion of the other reviewers that convinced me to give it a go.After watching Look I can only assume that those giving it zero must be the type of moviegoers who lap up the shallow dross that Hollywood more often than not peddles out to the sleeping herds.
So if you are one of those brain-dead masses then you probably won't think much of this movie.BUT if you are more discerning, enjoy thought provoking material and sometimes despair at the apparent crumbling of western societal values you should find this to be as stunning, riveting and sickly voyeuristic as I did.
After the film, I had the pleasure of speaking with writer/director Adam Rifkin.
We spoke for a good thirty minutes, and I felt it was appropriate and necessary to share my sincere thoughts on the film.If it has ever bothered you that our daily existence on modern Earth is documented by security cameras at nearly second, then "Look" will offer a alarming glance into the lives of people going about their days without the slightest idea that they are being caught on tape.
Shot entirely from the perspective of security cameras, "Look" offers a disturbing and at times hysterical view into the lives of ordinary individuals that are hurled into the path of extraordinary circumstances.
It is difficult without hyperbole to give compliment to the innovative film-making that is "Look" by writer/director Adam Rifkin.
From the shocking opening sequence, to the eloquent concluding montage, the security camera footage is seamlessly blended together into an engaging film.
The dialogue is so natural and candid that you often forget you are watching actors execute the fictional story.
One gets the sense that there is not an extraneous second in all of the footage; hence boredom is not likely while watching the film.
It is refreshing to go to the movies and be able to laugh and cry (within the same film) and leave with the sensation that you have learned something.
After watching the film, one is left with the sensation that the abundant presence of security cameras today is downright disturbing.
I simply don't want to give anything away."Look" is one of those rare films where you will leave the theatre having been simultaneously entertained, shocked, appalled, and enlightened.
There were times during the film that evoked a feeling of an eerie and hollow terror; an awesome compliment to the director who managed to take that type of desolation and marry it so effortlessly with comedy.
Hence, the film exists on many levels as a very sophisticated and existential look into the nature of our day to day lives, and what happens when ordinary people must face intense conflict.
Taking the conceit of ubiquitous surveillance cameras and crafting a movie is a great idea and nicely executed.Remember CRASH.
Rifkin goes one step further to create "real life" scenarios from surveillance footage.
It's funny because I don't think the acting in this is very good MOST of the time...but I'm not sure the movie would be any better if it was.
The storytelling and the "cinematography" is amazing.The terrible way that it starts led me to believe I was going to watch a pretty bad B movie and I even started thinking about what else I could do when I couldn't take it anymore...Then it started to turn into a compelling drama and then a thriller and the whole time I couldn't stop thinking: OMG - there are cameras EVERYWHERE!
I really enjoy that some things don't resolve - that's how life is, right there.Personally, I think that the way it suspends between reality and fiction - constantly pulling the viewer back and forth between the two - is just amazing.
This movie is basically several stories woven together, with the technical constraint of only using footage from any security cameras that would have seen them.
It's an interesting approach, but beyond that I found the actual stories lacking.This wouldn't be so bad if the packaging didn't make it out as a movie that showed why security cameras were bad; ironically, almost all the significant things the cameras capture the characters doing involve breaking the law or other poor things that you want cameras to capture.
Regardless, with so many cameras out there, there's no way even a small fraction of them can be watched by people all the time, since there are so many millions of hours produced each day.At some point I also realized that *none* of the shots in the movie are from actual security cameras, rather they're all done with movie cameras and then digitally altered to look like security camera footage (blurry, camera ID and time text overlay).
Sometimes peoples' faces are pixelated out, as if these were real security camera shots, even though this is just fiction.
Fortunately, Look was made and now after seeing it my longing has been sated.I have found after exposing humans to this film that shooting an entire movie primarily with surveillance cameras opens up many of the voyeuristic pleasure centers in their brains.
This despite the fact that the humans are watching this with the knowledge that this is a work of fiction.This film leaves you wanting more.
2 bit actors attempting to look as though they are being filmed without their knowledge.
I have no doubt that the average American is captured on camera several times a day but this film exploits the concept and does so VERY POORLY.
This lends "slightly" toward the sense that we are watching people captured on store security cameras, gas station monitors, ATM's, etc.
"Look", more like watch, takes the movie experience to a new high in voyeurism.
Using the medium of film in a new way, Director Adam Rifkin employs the idea and view of surveillance cameras to construct a very thought provoking masterpiece.
It doesn't just break barriers in film-making it embraces structure, story, tone and pace to create the ultimate engaging movie experience..
It's terrible.Okay, telling multiple, eventually overlapping stories with pseudo-surveillance camera footage is an idea that has some potential.
Not a single scene is convincing as actual surveillance camera footage.
The main characters are all too conveniently visible, at the center of the shot (as if there were a director filming ...), at all times.Not only that ...
I'm pretty sure most - possibly ALL - of the surveillance cameras represented in the film would not record audio.
This film's creators were either clueless, or banking on a clueless audience.To do this right, it would have had to lack audio, and show only small pieces of events, making it hard to see what's going on at select moments, telling the story by implying it.
The data markers could be dropped from the movie that was made, and it would basically play out like a low budget, schlocky student film.
The whole "Oooooo, Big Brother is watching" conceit is pretty extraneous to the actual film, and comes off as an afterthought.
All of the stories (a teacher having sex with a student, a cop getting killed at a traffic stop, a little girl getting abducted) are nothing more than juicy smut that play to our base nature in the same way certain prime-time TV dramas do.
This movie has nothing to say, but acts like it does in a half-***ed way by tacking on as the opening some text reporting some data about the number of surveillance cameras in the country or on the planet or whatever..
The story involves a lawyer and his family, a gas station attendant(Guiseppe Andrews) and his slacker friend hanging around, two teen school girls, a department store manager and his female co- workers, a nerd at work being picked on, a mysterious dark skinned foreigner in aback pack, two carjackers,a school teacher whose working on a screenplay and his pregnant wife, and a sinister man in a cap following a mom and her child.
It's unfortunate, as the concept is one that could have been used to provide commentary on big brother in society, and it's uses for good or bad.What we get instead, is a 105 minute collection of conveniently staged shots from a downward angle with identifier code used to provide nearly every "shock and appal" theme possible.
Take away the identifier code on the footage, and what you have is little more than a poorly written, poorly created B film..
Even if I where bleep up betting the gee-gees in ISLE OF MAN coming home head down I could not sit watch this movie.
It's one thing to show ordinary people in unusual situations caught when they thought no one was looking.
Will they think that the scum shown in this film is what most Americans are like?
The hook here is that security cameras and closed circuit TV is watching you all day, so using this footage the filmmakers follow a few groups of people around for a few days and piece together their stories.Do the random people end up crossing paths and interacting with each other you say?
(I mean the depressing movie a few years back where everyone interacted and everyone in it was either a horrible person, or the victim of a horrible person.) Credit the guy who came up with the gimmick, but aside from two jailbait girls getting down to their Gs in the first 5 minutes there is nothing memorable here, and even during that scene I felt the need to look away for fear of being an accessory to something gross.
You'll be shocked, you'll be curious, you'll feel skeptical,and by the end you'll know that this film is well worth the watch.
The first film ever shot through surveillance cameras, Independent filmmaker/Director Adam Rifkin has created an extraordinary new type of film that won the cine-Vegas film festival and continues to shock audiences throughout the world.
Support Adam Rifkin and Independent Film Making!
Director Adam Rifkin has crafted a fantastic script with many plot lines that over lap (think "Crash") where we meet characters and then watch them as they lead their public and their very private lives.
The surveillance camera footage allows us to watch from a very different perspective and see things that feel out of bounds.
The acting feels a little uneven at times but the actors are also less self conscious because the camera and the lights have been taken away.
Rifkin has created an original and thoroughly engaging movie that will leave you filled with great images.
i guess the purpose of this movie is too show that no matter where you are,there's a surveillance camera recording your every movement.that might make some paranoid,but others might be indifferent to it.i mean,if you have nothing to hide,who cares,right.but this isn'rt really a movie Per Se.it's more a cluster of vignettes some of which are connected,others which are not.it regardless,it isn't very realistic.and there are a lot of scenes,that could kindly be referred to as filler.you'll have to view it to find out more.there are no big name actors here,which is a plus.form a purely entertainment point of view,it's not bad.from an information standpoint,i don't think it's as good,though.but if you want something to pass the time,this works.for me,Look is a 6/10.
I wasn't sure I was going to like this movie at first, and I questioned if watching a movie via 'surveillance' camera footage was going to take me out of the film, but it totally kicked ass!
The movie totally takes advantage of the 'voyeur' aspect of the human psyche, I want to turn away but I can't!
I bought this movie, not expecting to see anything out of the ordinary, but as soon as I started to watch, I realized that a whole new genre of films had to be created with it's advent.The movie uses a series of security camera like shots to tell the stories of 4 individuals.
The camera-work was creative and the film's unique perspective on life and morality was awe inspiring.
I expected some commentary on the intrusiveness of surveillance cameras or on our voyeuristic culture, but the movie is very much NOT that.
It uses the STYLE of surveillance cameras, which is a clever idea, but the film simply exploits our voyeuristic tendencies rather than commenting on them.
The movie is so raunchy, the camera style just feels like an excuse to portray various people in inappropriate sexual situations while trying to call it "art." There are no characters to root for or sympathize with, and very little plot development beyond people behaving badly.
I wanted the conversations to feel a little more organic and authentic because they looked like they were coming straight out of real life surveillance footage, but they didn't.This "film" takes on some pretty powerful material, but doesn't do anything with it.
I was very excited by the premise of a film taking a serious look at the 'coined "Big Brother" culture we all live in today, it is a known fact to most people and has become a seemingly accepted part of our lives.
Hopefully this film could help me to understand some of the finer or more disturbing facts surrounding this reality.However the films opening scene had me thinking, perhaps I had the wrong film, maybe this was "Girls Gone Wild: Changing Rooms of the Midwest" and not a serious look at anything.
it was at this point I was compelled to look away, for good..
I really liked the idea of this show because it is true that we are captured on cameras many times throughout the day.
The fact that they chose to doctor the footage and use actors basically negates the entire idea of being captured on film without our knowledge.
LOOK- the Movie is POWERFUL, CAN NOT BE MISSED!.
It panders to the 'Big Brother is watching you' notion and is filmed entirely through some form of security or CCTV camera where supposedly no action or event goes unnoticed.
The film follows a series of different story lines covering mostly themes of a very disturbing nature.murder/rape/child abduction etc.
The sometimes grainy, muddy, or black and white filming is what makes the movie work – it appears 'real' and the actors mostly add to this effectively.
Whether or not this was a budget decision, using unknown actors was a good ploy by the director to instil that sense of regular people doing regular things and having regular jobs.
Nonetheless, the plot lines should retain your interest if the acting doesn't.After watching this for about the fourth time I pondered over what the point of the film was.
So, in a sense, the film turns on its head and points the camera right at the viewer.
For me, there was a real sense of being 'in' the movie, mostly because of the filming, and partly because of the element of normality that's brought into it.
The novelty is that every scene is filmed from the point of view of a security camera.
Mounted in places like stores, ATMs, intersections, and more, the movie definitely got me thinking.
Some of the highlights were (SPOILERS): the music the kid plays in the 7-11 (and the dance his friend does), the high school girl getting caught lying about being raped, and the department store saleswoman who gets mad at a co-worker for sleeping around with other employees (she was my favorite character).Overall, a well-done movie in most every aspect that doesn't feel like a well done movie.
I don't know what to think about this movie.
Teachers can hopefully avoid being sexually active with students by watching this film.
Yes some of these things are indeed disturbing, however the lessons learned from this film make it worth watching.
I do think though, people should watch this film, it really is pretty good.
If though it is looked at as it is, this film is a good one, and should be watched by as many people who find the title interesting enough to "Look" at..
Rifkin took on a very interesting concept and a great way to tell a story through security surveillance cameras, hidden nanny cameras, police dashboard cameras, ATM security cameras, cell phone cameras, etc.
Using only these types of cameras really made the story telling very unique.
Each shot just grabs your attention.A lot of what you see shouldn't come as much of a shock or surprise because we read and hear about it in the news, but you also think how many more disturbing things happen that are captured on these cameras.The only downfall of this movie is not really having a protagonist throughout the story.
You don't really care for most of the characters and very little pathos are created.At the same time that might not even be necessary because the message of the movie is probably more powerful that way..
LOOKing for a Truly Good Bad Film?.
There are a lot of improbabilities in LOOK: e.g., Isn't it illegal to install surveillance cameras in dressing rooms?
Unlike many films that utilize this multiple frame-story technique, each episode of LOOK is well-developed and contributes in some meaningful way to the grand whole.Along with the fact that it's simply very fun to watch, perhaps the best things about LOOK are the morals to its stories.