Johnny Depp continues his trek back into the mainstream with Secret Window, a suspense thriller that is neither suspenseful nor thrilling.
Fresh off his Oscar-nominated role as Capt. Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, Depp returns to Earth, sort of, as Mort Rainey, an author with writer's block who is going through a messy divorce.
While secluded in a cabin where he spends more time sleeping on the couch than tapping on the keyboard, Rainey is visited by a psychotic stranger (John Turturro) who accuses of him of plagiarizing his work.
The stranger, John Shooter, is like something out of a pulp mystery. From the top of his black farmer's hat to the depths of his southern drawl, he exudes evil and he's pissed not only because he says Rainey stole his story, but more importantly, because he changed the ending. Until that situation is rectified, he warns, no one in Rainey's life is safe.
After Shooter's threats prove to be anything but idle, Rainey calls in help from the city in the guise of private detective Ken Karsch (Charles S. Dutton) who fears Shooter might be much more dangerous than even Rainey fears.
Despite Karsch's best efforts to scare the stranger off, Shooter continues to plague Rainey who becomes obsessed with proving he didn't steal his work, an obsession that draws his ex-wife (Maria Bello) and her new boyfriend (Timothy Hutton) into the fray.
What happens next isn't exactly a page-turner. In fact, if you haven't already figured out where this one is going from the trailers you will shortly into the film.
Based on a novella by horror writer Stephen King, Secret Window, like many of the author's adaptations, does not translate well to the big screen despite the best efforts of Depp and Turturro.
Depp, whose every action you can feel the audience pulling for, plays Rainey as a ball of tics rolled up in a dishevelled bathrobe. Turturro, meanwhile, is left to try and pump realism into a character who seems incapable of penning his own name, let alone a novel. In the end it comes down to a case of neither of them having enough decent material to work with.
David Koepp, who directed Panic Room and Stir of Echoes, loves using offbeat characters in claustrophobic situations to create tension, but when the audience has already figured out the ending, even the best directing won't stop a film from turning into nothing more than a waiting game.
(This film is rated 14-A)
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