Before I say anything else, let's get my obligatory "Hannibal" mention out of the way. Yes, this film features Laurence Fishburne (who plays Jack Crawford on "Hannibal") in a supporting role as a secretive scientist. Fishburne brings his strong screen presence and gravitas to the role, which is no small feet considering how difficult it is just to not look ridiculous when you spend the entire film in a bulky hazmat suit. His performance aside, this was a film that I really enjoyed for a while--it was very intriguing early on--but eventually it started to sag under the weight of its own mystery.
The film does a great job setting up its main character. In fact, it features one of the absolute best character establishing scenes I've seen in a long time. It's a brief scene where the main character, Nic, is leaving a convenience store and spots a kid failing to win a toy from a claw game. He stops, uses a sharpie to draw a diagram on the machine to show the kid how to get the toy he wants, then gives the kid a dollar to keep playing. Not only does this get the audience on Nic's side by having him be nice to a kid, but it also serves the purpose of demonstrating his technical skills that will come into play later. It is elegant in its simplicity.
As the film's setup continues, it reveals that Nic is on a cross country trip to take his girlfriend, Haley, to her new college. A third friend, Jonah, is tagging along. The two boys are, to Haley's chagrin, engaging in a game of cat-and-mouse with a computer hacker named "Nomad". When they think they've figured out where Nomad lives, they make a detour only to find a creepy abandoned house right out of a horror movie. In short order, everything hits the proverbial fan and the film cuts to black. Next thing we know, Nic is being interviewed by the hazmat suit clad Fishburne, who tells him he's just been recovered from an alien abduction. The movie then turns into a film following Nic's efforts to figure out what has happened/is happening to him, find his friends, and escape. This is where the film loses a bit of its edge. The various story threads are not always woven together particularly well, and the film becomes solely about an extended attempt to escape for quite a while, with little focus on solving the "mystery". This makes some of the reveals feel unearned--the characters simply discover them by chance instead of really trying to figure out what is going on, making it a little harder for the audience to play along. The film's final plot twist works and doesn't feel like a cheat, but its reveal could have been more elegant. The last several minutes of the film also feature a bit too much slow motion for my taste, used in this case to call attention to some of the special effects and maybe to up the emotional resonance a bit. For me it compromised the film's immersion somewhat, but then again I've never been a huge fan of slow motion in films (it can work, but it's hard to do well).
The earlier parts of the film are very good, however. The scene at the abandoned house played out just like a sequence from a horror film, and was effective at raising the tension. I also applaud the film for not being conventional. It took risks. Some of them paid off and some didn't, but it was refreshing to see a movie that was willing to be original. That's a big part of the reason it was so intriguing for a long while. I truly had no idea where it was headed. In a world full of formulaic cookie cutter films, it's nice to be able to say that every once in a while.
No comments:
Post a Comment