Even without seeing the trailer, it is easy to figure out that Secret Window is a psychological thriller with a surreal edge.
After all, its marketing slogan is: "Some windows should never be opened." And versatile writer-director David Koepp (he wrote Panic Room, Spider-Man, Jurassic Park, etc.) based the slick flick on a Stephen King novella, Secret Window, Secret Garden. So audiences enter the cinema knowing something is up, that strange things are going to go bump in the night, that blood will spill.
Consequently, that part of Secret Window, the mechanical genre element, is a given, as Koepp tells the story of a volatile yet charismatic novelist (Johnny Depp), his threatening nemesis (John Turturro), his bitter estranged wife (Maria Bello) and her annoying boyfriend (Timothy Hutton).
In a saga set in New York State but shot in various locales in Quebec, things get twisted between the protagonists. You sit there waiting for the multiple shocks, for the shocking twist, for the horror gore violence that seems so inevitable. Sure enough, this movie has all that and more. If you like that sort of thing, that thing is definitely on screen.
The plot is not especially hard to decipher either, although I am not going to play spoiler. Suffice it to say that Secret Window is operating on mediocrity cruise control, although the filmmaking techniques are first rate.
The real pleasure here -- and the reason for a generous rating -- is Johnny Depp. He is finally getting recognized as a great American actor, as well as a bona fide movie star. Witness the best actor Oscar nomination for Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl, a role that also earned him the best actor prize from the Screen Actors Guild. Depp's quirks and his mercurial personality are now part of his arsenal as an actor, not impediments to respect.
In Secret Window, Depp runs wild with eccentric behaviour. Yet, with his technical proficiency equal to his eccentric decision-making, Depp makes every choice seem appropriate or even absolutely essential to the character.
The highlights include his defiant sleeping habits, his struggle with cigarette addiction, the way he wears that ratty housecoat, the physicality in his face when the phone rings and all his off-kilter interactions with the peripheral people in his life (Charles Dutton as the private investigator, Len Cariou as the wily old town cop). His appearance is awful (no movie star ego in Depp). He is unshaven, unkempt and even geeky.
That turns his novelist into a flesh-and-blood character who engages our sympathies and ensures that we have an emotional stake in his actions, in his predicament and in his fate.
That way, when things get "thrilling" and the edgy psychological stuff takes over, we still have Depp to cling to no matter where that takes the viewer.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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