Corporate Line: Mort Rainey (Depp), a writer just coming off of a troublesome divorce with his ex-wife, Amy (Bello), finds himself stalked at his remote lake house by a psychotic stranger (Turturro) who claims Mort stole his best story idea and just changed the ending.
The Good: John Turturro outshines Deep, which is completely out of the norm. Turturro’s character John Shooter would be interesting all by himself. How often do you see a film and the secondary character are is more interesting than the man character? Sometimes too often and Shooter is that guy. Depp’s character, Mort Rainey, is interesting but unable to hold up an entire film. Deep doesn’t hurt the movie, that’s left up to the script and the poor editing.
The Bad: The film is based on Stephen King’s novella ‘Two Past Midnight: Secret Window, Secret Garden’ and if you saw Dreamcatcher than you know what to expect from Secret Window. Secret Window is slow, very, very slow. It trudges along at a snails pace and is hardly ever frightening, even at the end. I don’t know what’s worse, a slow movie or one where you know the ending fifteen minutes into the movie. I’m no shaman but it was crystal clear what was going to happen even when they threw curveball after curveball. You only need to see a few Stephen King movies to figure out the path for which he is taking us. It appears that many of King’s characters are one in the same the only change is in their name.
Secret Window is the Shining without the terror. Director David Koepp is no Stanley Kubrick. Johnny Depp is too cute to scare you like Jack Nicholson. As good as Turturro is anywhere near as scary as kid screaming “Redrum,” the twins in the hallway, or the woman in the bathtub. I’m actually getting freaked out just thinking about it. Secret Window doesn’t raise one goose-bump. Perhaps I’m desensitized.
Frankly: Whether the studio held Secret Window until after the Oscars in fear that it might hurt Depp’s changes or pushed it up to capitalize on his nomination I’m not sure. I am sure Secret Window is forgettable.
+ Charlie Craine
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