Nothing Secret About This Window
Secret Window tries hard to be an edge-of-your-seat scare fest, but, instead, only rises to the level of campy weirdness, fueled mainly by Johnny Depp's performance.
Based on the Stephen King novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, the movie starts out promisingly enough with novelist Mort Rainey (Depp) coming apart at the seams after he discovers his wife has been cheating on him. Moving to a remote cabin (what is a scary movie without one?), Rainey spends most of his days writing tripe and sleeping. That is until one day he receives a knock on his door and finds a weird black-clad stranger, John Shooter (John Turturro), standing on his doorstep accusing the successful writer of stealing his story. Rainey protests, Shooter threatens, and the game is afoot.
What follows is several "scary" scenes that have things jumping out of the shadows, which, to be fair, are startling, but are hardly worth the effort. Written and directed by David Koepp (screenwriter of Spider-Man and Panic Room), the movie lacks the psychological depth that is necessary to make it work. This includes some background into Rainey, particularly about an earlier, true charge of plagiarism, and why his marriage to his wife Amy (Maria Bello), who has some sort of psychic insight a la King's The Shining, disintegrated. Koepp includes a twist at the end, which any savvy moviegoer will spot by the second reel. The transparency of the plot and Koepp's focus on the boo-inspired scares makes this Shining-Lite nothing more than an exercise in tedium.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the movie isn't Depp's campy Jack Sparrow-inspired performance as Rainey, but Turturro's awful turn as Mississippi hick John Shooter. There is nothing menacing or threatening about this guy, even after he starts taking revenge on Rainey. He is simply annoying. The scenes between Shooter and Rainey are excruciating because the novelist is so obviously unimpressed by the threats that there is no tension built between the two.
The rest of the cast, including Charles S. Dutton, as a private investigator, and Timothy Hutton as Amy's lover, are completely wasted and seem to be just going through the motions of this flat thriller.
The biggest problem, however, is that because there is no menace or tension built up throughout the picture, the ending, for all its obviousness, seems rather abrupt and wholly unmotivated and without cause—again a fault of Koepp's action-oriented screenplay. The last shot of Depp will undoubtedly go down in the annals of thriller movies as one of the most bizarre of his career.
It's too bad that Depp didn't follow up his previous lark Pirates of the Caribbean with something either of substance or quality. Hopefully, his next outing will be better, because this window need not be found by anyone—particularly Depp's fans.
Based on the Stephen King novella Secret Window, Secret Garden, the movie starts out promisingly enough with novelist Mort Rainey (Depp) coming apart at the seams after he discovers his wife has been cheating on him. Moving to a remote cabin (what is a scary movie without one?), Rainey spends most of his days writing tripe and sleeping. That is until one day he receives a knock on his door and finds a weird black-clad stranger, John Shooter (John Turturro), standing on his doorstep accusing the successful writer of stealing his story. Rainey protests, Shooter threatens, and the game is afoot.
What follows is several "scary" scenes that have things jumping out of the shadows, which, to be fair, are startling, but are hardly worth the effort. Written and directed by David Koepp (screenwriter of Spider-Man and Panic Room), the movie lacks the psychological depth that is necessary to make it work. This includes some background into Rainey, particularly about an earlier, true charge of plagiarism, and why his marriage to his wife Amy (Maria Bello), who has some sort of psychic insight a la King's The Shining, disintegrated. Koepp includes a twist at the end, which any savvy moviegoer will spot by the second reel. The transparency of the plot and Koepp's focus on the boo-inspired scares makes this Shining-Lite nothing more than an exercise in tedium.
Perhaps the biggest problem with the movie isn't Depp's campy Jack Sparrow-inspired performance as Rainey, but Turturro's awful turn as Mississippi hick John Shooter. There is nothing menacing or threatening about this guy, even after he starts taking revenge on Rainey. He is simply annoying. The scenes between Shooter and Rainey are excruciating because the novelist is so obviously unimpressed by the threats that there is no tension built between the two.
The rest of the cast, including Charles S. Dutton, as a private investigator, and Timothy Hutton as Amy's lover, are completely wasted and seem to be just going through the motions of this flat thriller.
The biggest problem, however, is that because there is no menace or tension built up throughout the picture, the ending, for all its obviousness, seems rather abrupt and wholly unmotivated and without cause—again a fault of Koepp's action-oriented screenplay. The last shot of Depp will undoubtedly go down in the annals of thriller movies as one of the most bizarre of his career.
It's too bad that Depp didn't follow up his previous lark Pirates of the Caribbean with something either of substance or quality. Hopefully, his next outing will be better, because this window need not be found by anyone—particularly Depp's fans.
